le to suit you
after all. Vanish, daughters of Midian!'

The girls vanished accordingly, whispering and laughing; and Philammon
found himself alone. Although he was somewhat soothed by the old woman's
last speech, yet a sense of terror, of danger, of coming temptation,
kept him standing sternly on his feet, looking warily round the chamber,
lest a fresh siren should emerge from behind some curtain or heap of
pillows.

On one side of the room he perceived a doorway, filled by a curtain of
gauze, from behind which came the sound of whispering voices. His fear,
growing with the general excitement of his mind, rose into anger as he
began to suspect some snare; and he faced round towards the curtain, and
stood like a wild beast at bay, ready, with uplifted arm, for all evil
spirits, male or female.

'And he will show himself? How shall I accost him?' whispered a
well-known voice--could it be Hypatia's? And then the guttural Hebrew
accent of the old woman answered-- 'As you spoke of him this morning--'

'Oh! I will tell him all, and he must--he must have mercy! But he?--so
awful, so glorious!--'

What the answer was, he could not hear but the next moment a sweet
heavy scent, as of narcotic gums, filled the room--mutterings of
incantations--and then a blaze of light, in which the curtain vanished,
and disclosed to his astonished eyes, enveloped in a glory of luminous
smoke, the hag standing by a tripod, and, kneeling by her, Hypatia
herself, robed in pure white, glittering with diamonds and gold, her
lips parted, her head thrown back, her arms stretched out in an agony of
expectation.

In an instant, before he had time to stir, she had sprung through the
blaze, and was kneeling at his feet.

'Phoebus! beautiful, glorious, ever young! Hear me! only a moment! only
this once!'

Her drapery had caught fire from the tripod, but she did not heed it.
Philammon instinctively clasped her in his arms, and crushed it out, as
she cried--

'Have mercy on me! Tell me the secret! I will obey thee! I have no
self--I am thy slave! Kill me, if thou wilt: but speak!'

The blaze sank into a soft, warm, mellow gleam, and beyond it what
appeared?

The negro-woman, with one finger upon her lips, as with an imploring,
all but despairing look, she held up to him her little crucifix.

He saw it. What thoughts flashed through him, like the lightning bolt,
at that blessed sign of infinite self-sacrifice, I say not; let those
who know it