For many days Joseph avoided the spot which had witnessed his temptation; but of nights, when he lay spent and weary with his battle, through the grating of his window came the song of the Saracen maid and the whisper of her golden lute. He knew she was calling to him, therefore he beat his breast and scourged himself to cure his longing. But night after night she sang from the heights above, and the burden of her song was ever the same, of one who waited and of one who came.
Bit by bit she wore down the man's resistance, then drew him up through the groves of citron and pomegrante, into the grape fields; time and again he fled. Closer and closer she lured him, until one day he touched her flesh—woman's flesh—and forgot all else. But now it was her turn to flee.
She poised like a sunbeam just beyond his reach, her bosom heaving, her lips as ripe and full as the grapes above, her eyes afire with invitation. In answer to his cry she made a glowing promise, subtle, yet warm and soft, as of the flesh.
"To-night, when the moon hangs over yonder pass, I shall play on the balcony outside my window. Beneath is a door, unbarred. Come, for I shall be alone in all the castle, and there you will find music made flesh, and flesh made music." Then she was gone.
The soul of the priest had been in torment heretofore, but chaos engulfed it during the hours that followed. He was like a man bereft of reason; he burned with fever, yet his whole frame shook as from a wintry wind. He prayed, or tried to, but his eyes beheld no vision save a waiting Moorish maid with hair like night, his stammering tongue gave forth no Latin, but repeated o'er and o'er her parting promise:
"There you will find music made flesh and flesh made music."
He realized that the foul fiend had him by the throat, and undertook to cast him off; but all the time he knew that when the moon came, bringing with it the cadence of a song, he would go, even though his going led to perdition. And go he did, groveling in his misery. His sandals spurned the rocky path when he heard the voice of Zahra sighing through the branches; then, when he had reached the castle wall, he saw her bending toward him from the balcony above.
"I come to you," she whispered; and an instant later her form showed white against the blackness of the low stone door in front of him. There, in the gloom, for one brief instant, her yielding body met his, her hands reached upward and drew his face down to her own; then out from his hungry arms she glided, and with rippling laughter fled into the blackness.
"Zahra!" he cried.
"Come!" she whispered, and when he hesitated, "Do you fear to follow?"