She received them, sitting on her divan, clothed in a purple robe, and shrouded in a long veil.  This she took off when Tancred came towards her, and he marvelled at the strangeness of her beauty.  There was nothing oriental about her.  She was a Greek girl of the ancient type, with violet eyes, fair cheeks, and dark hair.

“Prince,” she said, “we are a people who wish neither to see nor to be seen.  We do not care what goes on in the world around.  Our mountains are wild and barren, but while Apollo dwells among us, we do not care for gold, or silk, or jewels.”

“Apollo!” cried Tancred.  “Are the gods of Olympus still worshipped on earth?”

“Yes, Apollo still lives among us, and another greater than Apollo,” said the young queen, looking at Tancred long and earnestly.  “Follow me, and you shall now behold the secret of the Ansarey.”

Her maidens adorned her with a garland of roses, and put a garland on the head of Tancred, and she led him through a portal of bronze, down an underground passage, into an Ionic temple, filled with the white and lovely forms of the gods of ancient Greece.

“Do you know this?” said the queen to Tancred, looking at a statue in golden ivory, and then at the young Englishman, whose clear-cut features and hyacinthine locks curiously resembled those of the carven image.

“It is Phoebus Apollo,” said Tancred, and, moved by admiration at the beauty of the figure, he murmured some lines of Homer.

“Ah, you know all!” cried the queen.  “You know our secret language.  Yes, this is Phoebus Apollo.  He used to stand in Antioch in the ancient days before the Christians drove us into the mountains.  And look,” she said, pointing to the statue beside Apollo, “here is the Syrian goddess before whom the pilgrims of the world once knelt.  She is named Astarte, and I am called after her.”

“Oh, angels watch over me!” said Tancred to himself as Queen Astarte fixed her violet eyes upon him with a glance of love that could not be mistaken, and led him back into the hall of audience.

There he saw Fakredeen bending over a maiden with a flower-like face, and large, dark, lustrous eyes.

“She is my foster-sister, Eva,” said Fakredeen.  “The Ansareys captured her on the plain of Aleppo.”

Tancred had met Eva at the house of Besso in Jerusalem, but she did not then exercise over him the strange charm which now drew him to her side.  It seemed to him that the beautiful Jewish girl had been sent to help him in his struggle against the heathen spells of Astarte.  As he was meditating how he could rescue her, a messenger came in, and announced that the pasha of Aleppo had invaded the mountains at the head of 5,000 troops.

“Ah!” cried Astarte.  “Few of them will ever see Aleppo again.  I have 25,000 men under arms, and you, my prince,” she said, turning to Tancred, “shall command them.”