“Declare my love for thee!” she said in thrilling accents..  “Thou boaster!  Let the gods, who have kindled this fiery end for us, bear witness to my hatred!  I hate thee! ...  Aye, even thee!".. and she pointed at him jeeringly, as he recoiled from her in wide eyed anguish and amazement:—­“No man have I ever loved, but thee have I hated most of all!  All men have I despised for their folly, greed and vain-glory,—­I have fought them with their own weapons of avarice, cunning, cruelty, and falsehood,—­but thou hast been even beneath my contempt!  ’Twas scarcely worth my while to fool thee, thou wert so easily fooled! ...  ’Twas idle sport to rouse thy passions, they were so easily roused!  Poet and Perjurer, . .  Singer and Sophist!  Thou to whom the Genius of Poesy was as a pearl set in a swine’s snout! ... thou wert not worthy to be my dupe, seeing that thou camest to me already in bonds, the dupe of thine own Self!  Niphrata loved thee,—­and thou didst play with and torture her more unmercifully than wild beasts play with and torture their prey; . . but thou couldst never trifle with me!  O thou who hast taken so much pride in the breaking of many women’s hearts, learn that thou hast never stirred one throb of passion in mine! ... that I have loathed thy beauty while caressing thee, and longed to slay thee while embracing thee! ... and that even now I would I saw thee dead before me, ere I myself am forced to die!”

Pausing in the swift torrent of her words, her white breast heaved violently with the rise and fall of her panting breath,—­her dark, brilliant eyes dilated, while the symbolic Jewel she wore, and the crown of serpents’ heads in her streaming hair, seemed to glitter about her like so many points of lightning.  At that instant one side of the Sanctuary split asunder, giving way to a bursting wreath of flames.  Seeing this, she uttered a piercing cry, and stretched out her arms.

“Zephoranim! ...  Save me!”

In a second, the King sprang toward her, but not before Sah-luma, wild with wrath, had interposed himself between them.

“Back!” he exclaimed passionately, addressing the infuriated monarch..  “While I live, Lysia is mine!—­let her hate and deny me as she will!—­and sooner than see her in thine arms, O King, I will slay her where she stands!”

His bold attitude was magnificent,—­his countenance more than beautiful in its love betrayed despair, . . and for a moment the savage Zephoranim paused irresolute, his scowling brows bent on his erstwhile favorite Minstrel with an expression that hovered curiously between bitterest enmity and reluctant reverence.  There seemed to be a struggling consciousness in his mind of the immortality of a Poet as compared with the evanescent power of a King,—­and also a quick realization of the truth that, let his anger be what it would, they twain were partakers in the same evil, and were mutually deceived by the same false woman!  But ere his saving sense of justice could prevail, a ripple of discordant, delirious laughter broke once more from Lysia’s lips,—­her eye shone vindictively,—­her whole face became animated with a sudden glow of fiendish triumph.