Hearing it, involuntarily, Belshazzar drew back from her, smitten with a kind of terror at what he must have done. She was there, wide-eyed and shivering, before him. The last shred of her aureole was gone. She sobbed. Her eyes had become blindly bright, and presently overflowed. In that first moment of humanity she wept. It was her destiny. Something more she did also. In her weakness, in her great solitude, she did what women will. All alone in a strange world, unsheltered, unprotected, amazed and confused by the great tumult raging within her, she turned to him who stood before her, the embodiment of human strength and beauty, and to him she held out her arms.
Belshazzar went to her, not fiercely now, but reverently, almost as much amazed as she herself at this more than fulfilment of the dream that he had so long and so blasphemously cherished. Holding her again close in his arms, his senses reeled under the human warmth of her body. Bending his dark head over hers he whispered to her, in such a tone as he had never used before, those words that make the world immortal:
"Istar! Oh, my beloved! I love thee!"
One of her arms crept fearfully round his neck, and the tears from her eyes fell upon his cheeks, and he understood that she answered him. Knowing not what else was left for her, she clung to him the more closely as he lifted her slender body and carried her up to the daïs at the far end of the room. And so through the night, while the lamps burned low, and the white star sank from sight, for those two, through the wisdom of God, time ceased, and their souls were mingled with eternity. And over them, though neither of them saw, in answer to the mortal cry of their one-time sister, archetype on archetype descended from the height to watch over the place where Istar had become a woman.
Night, the enchanted night, the twenty-second of the burning midsummer month, hung heavily through the great spaces of the temple of Istar. Silence, far-reaching and luminous, spread within from the open portals, past the altar and the deep and the sacred recording-stone, to the foot of the first of the steps that led up to the curtained door of the sanctuary, within which the sanctification of the temple was to take place in the morning. The east was still black when the first dim figures, forerunners of the vast crowds that by sunrise would fill the temple to overflowing, passed the bronze gates and took their places at the foot of the sanctuary steps.
White dawn entered, mistlike, through the portals of the high house, and the myriad temple lights that had pierced the night with their tiny points of flame grew very dim; and when at last the sun sent his first scarlet and golden messengers up the eastern sky to announce his coming, these lights came to resemble mere reflections of the burnished brass and beaten gold that covered the temple walls. By now there was an immense throng inside, and moment by moment it was augmented; for all Erech, and all the country-side for miles around, was making its way to this place. Finally the long-awaited Shamash leaped into the sky, holding before him his shield of glory, sending a great shaft of light into this dwelling-place of his sister Istar. A murmur of prayers for the morning rose up through the lofty spaces of the temple-roof, and the silence that followed these was intense with expectation; for now, at any moment, their goddess might come to them.
Within the sanctuary everything had long since been prepared. During the night several priestesses of Istar had kept a vigil there, offering up continuous prayers before the stone pedestal on which, in any other temple, the statue of the goddess would have stood. Water, over which one hundred charms and incantations had been said, filled the purifying basin. The place was sweet with the odor of spices, and its air hung hazy with incense. Beside the broad basin, upon a table plated with gold, stood a flask of perfumed oil, treasured for many years for use upon some such holy occasion as this. The little, windowless room was lighted by a swinging-lamp of exquisite workmanship, kept burning night and day in the perpetual gloom. In this place the consecrated hierodules had held their prayerful watch through the long night of the passion; and at dawn they left it empty, to await the coming of its divine occupant. Five minutes after the departure of the veiled women, however, the sanctuary was invaded by three persons who bore no resemblance to gods. Vul-Ramân and his two companions, their priests' dresses covered with long cloaks of sombre hue, glided in through the concealed door behind the pedestal. The three of them were pale and rather anxious-eyed as they took up the positions suggested by Amraphel. Vul-Ramân, only, carried a weapon: the same thin-bladed, delicate knife that he had used on more than one occasion similar to this. Twice he ran his finger carefully along the edge of the blade, and the last time his skin was neatly slit by the metal. Satisfied with the trial, he slipped the little instrument under his cloak again, and then the long, nervous vigil of the murderers began.
By the time the sun was half an hour high, the crowd outside the temple had become restless, and the close-packed rows of men and women were as impatient as they dared to be. No one of any importance had yet made an appearance. Surely the king, the prince, the governor, and their attendant lords should be here by this time. Would Istar come if they still delayed? Would that she might! And then, the mention of Istar again bringing up the most absorbing of all topics, every man and his neighbor fell to talking of how he had seen her on the previous evening on her way from the river to her temple; and on every hand were heard descriptions of her wonderful and unearthly presence. That baffling radiance that flowed about her was the veil of Sin, her father. It proclaimed her divinity as nothing else could have proclaimed it. Heretofore there had been not a little scepticism over the exaggerated reports brought down from Babylon during the two past years; but there was no scepticism in Erech to-day. Goddess she assuredly was; and as a goddess she should dwell in the heavenly house they had built for her, on ground consecrated to her many thousands of years ago.
At last, from the street leading up to the temple, came a blare of trumpets and a clangor of cymbals, and a shiver of excitement overran the people when they realized the approach of the king and his royal train. Four ushers with lily-topped wands forced a passage through the crowd, and finally entered the temple itself, where the making of an aisle was no easy task.