"Istar, Istar, come away with me! Fly! Here is death if we remain. Come!"
Charmides seized hold of her while the missiles were striking them both in great numbers. Then, taking her up bodily, the Greek turned and fled rapidly down the hill-slope in the direction of the nearest shelter, a broad palm-grove upon the river-bank. For a few moments Istar was helpless; but he found, to his immense relief, that they were not pursued. When at last they were beyond danger Istar shuddered and cried to be put down. He set her anxiously upon her feet and found that she could walk.
"If I had but wine to give thee!" he exclaimed, as he saw her weakness.
"Nay, Charmides, thou hast saved and greatly helped me. I give thee blessing from the heart. And now thou must leave me, that I may go alone down to the river. Fear not. None will accost me. I am well."
The Greek would have protested against letting her go, but that he had an unaccountable feeling that a higher force than hers was dominating both of them. Therefore, after a glance into her uplifted face, he fell upon his knees before her, and bent his head before the will of the Almighty that was over them. And there, while the sunset shed its light around them like a halo, Istar turned away and went forth alone in the sunset light, to the grove of palms upon the bank of the quietly flowing Euphrates.
XXIII
THE SILVER SKY
Never, in all the days of Babylon, had there been an evening more fair than this. At sunset the burning day melted and flowed away, down the western sky, in a flood of liquid gold. A faint breath of air came over the river from across the distant Tigris, out of the cool hills of Elam, the conqueror's land. On the river-bank rose the palm-trees, casting their shadows into the softly slipping water; and the turf beneath them was all strewn with sunset gold. To the north lay Babylon, huge and black and silent, her dying thousands shut away behind the vastly towering walls. To the west and south stretched great irrigated fields of ripening grain, in the midst of which were many shadufs, with their patient buffaloes at the interminable work of drawing water from the clay wells. Still farther back were the crumbling brick huts of the tillers of the soil. On the edge of the river two long-legged cranes stood quietly meditating. Overhead a flock of pelicans wound their slow way southward towards the marshes where they dwelt. From the far distance was heard the loud cry of the bittern. Otherwise the land was silent—wrapped in evening prayer.
Along the river-bank, under the shadowy palms, with the golden light glowing about her, walked Istar, musing gently upon many things. Voices from the infinite addressed her. The iron was leaving her soul. Her mind was transfused with quietude. She ceased to notice or to feel the aching of her bruised body. She was holding communion with deeper things, and she moved with her head bent forward and her eyes upon the ground. Presently she paused at the brink of the river—the fair, well-flowing river, that held in its pure depths the body of the storm-eyed, her beloved. Its flashing waters encompassed her with glory. Her mortal eyes grew blind with light. Presently, out of the glowing depth, there came to her, as once before, a voice—but now a voice most familiar, most dear to her ears, most longed-for since its silence. Belshazzar spoke from the beyond, in the words that Allaraine had written on the temple wall, and that had appeared to her again from the river, on the night of death: