"I am Delilah. Bring a chalice, I want a drink."
The fifth:
"I am Ashtoreth. Bring the censer, I want some perfume."
"I am Tamar," announced the sixth. "Bring a lachrymatory, I want to fill it with my tears."
There were seven in the company. The seventh had on her head a crown, and was clad in a robe of gold-brocade with a long train. "I am Mylitta, Queen of Sheba," she announced in a voice that sounded like a sweet-toned bell. "Bring me the pyx."
Now, although the rest of the orders had confounded me with their impiety, I had obeyed them, because I had been commanded to do so. This last, however, made me hesitate; I could not lay sacrilegious hands on so holy a vessel.
I shuddered, and looked with horrified eyes at the commanding phantom. Suddenly, she lifted her arm, and gave me a sound blow on the back, at the same time screaming:
"Don't you hear me, dolt? I want the pyx." Feeling convinced that further hesitation to obey this visitant from another world would not be well for me, I went to the altar, and with a violently trembling hand lifted the sacred vessel from its accustomed place and brought it to the lady.
"Now, follow us," she commanded; and the procession from the crypt passed on, I following in the rear, out of the chapel, up a winding staircase, to a part of the castle I had not yet been in. We halted in front of a gilded iron door; it opened in response to three raps, and I saw into a long, magnificently furnished saloon. There were no windows in it; a mysterious radiance shone from the niches in the walk, which were hung with gold-embroidered silk.
As we crossed the threshold, a heavy curtain across the further end of the saloon parted, and several male figures, garbed in old-time costumes—Turkish, Roman, Persian, Chaldean and Egyptian—came to meet the women, who greeted them thus: