"Daniel," said the old man, speaking in Hebrew, "you have told me that your people worship one only God. In your holy scriptures is there any word of another—a goddess—that is divine?"
"No!" was the quick answer.
"Hast thou—" Amraphel bent towards him—"hast thou beheld, closely, her whom they call Istar?"
"Yea."
"Hast thou spoken with her?"
"Perhaps."
"Nay, be not cautious with me, Jew. I speak from my heart. I ask as one that knows nothing, what is the idea of thy mind concerning the woman that dwells in the holy temple of the goddess? Is she divine?"
"Divine! Say rather that she is the incarnation of Satan! Her heart is full of evil."
"Yet you see in her a supernatural power?"
Amraphel asked the question with unmistakable anxiety; and Daniel, raising his eyes, glanced for an instant into those of the priest. It was the only answer that he gave, yet it was the one that Amraphel had most feared. So, then, Daniel himself did not know the secret of Istar's existence. It was well enough to call her an incarnation of evil. That, according to Amraphel's way of thinking, did not at all lessen her power. It was a rather discouraging silence that fell between the two; a silence that Daniel finally broke.