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?”

“Zahra!” he repeated; but his voice was strange, and he tore at the cloth that bound his throat, stumbling after her, guided only by her voice.

Always she was just beyond his reach; always she eluded him; yet never did he lose the perfume of her presence nor the rustle of her silken garments.  Over and over he cried her name, until at last he realized from the echo of his calling that he had come into a room of great dimensions and that the girl was gone.

For an instant he was in despair, until her voice reached him from above: 

“I do but test you, Christian priest.  I am waiting.”

“‘Flower of the World,’” he stammered, hoarsely.  “Whence lead the stairs?”

“And do you love me, then?” she queried, in a tone that set him all ablaze.

“Zahra,” he repeated, “I shall perish for want of you.”

“How do you measure this devotion?” she insisted, softly.  “Will it cool with the dawn, or are you mine in truth forever and all time?”