Moments passed, which to the watchers dragged themselves as if they had been hours. Hours passed, heavy and slow as nightless days. Days lapsed into weeks. But neither day nor night brought rest to the disordered brain of Zillah. Her tongue ran incessantly; now uttering some fear: "The priests! Moloch! Save him!" Now some pleasant illusion: "He comes! No need for a crown! See the rays about his head! Baal crowns him with his own beams." Day and night her phantasy ran in one or other of these grooves. There was no sleep, only brief lulls in the wild storm of delirium. After some days, Elnathan brought a physician from Samaria, an attendant on the household of Sanballat. He murmured over the tossing body some magical incantations. These failing, he prescribed the usage among the tribes beyond the Jordan in cases of high fever; namely, to wrap the patient in wet cloths. Under this treatment she caught some periods of quiet sleep, but only to awake again in the world of ideal torment or ecstasy. Her lover was almost equally insane at times with his grief. He accused himself of being the cause of her death through his attempt to rescue her from the shambles of Apheca. "No, no," old Yusef said at such suggestions. "The Lord gave man wisdom. For the use of so much as he receives the man is responsible. What happens beyond our wisdom is the Lord's dealing, not man's. You did as you thought wisest and best. Afflict yourself with no censure. Say now with our Psalmist, 'It is the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good!'" At times Marduk would stare at the sky, as if questioning whether this were not some curse of Baal. Then he would pray to Jehovah, into whose land he had come, to defend him from the assault of his old enemies, the gods of Phoenicia. But this mood was of briefest duration--only in moments when his grief made him forget his scepticism. Once he inquired of Ben Yusef if it were not possible that, through ignorance of the ways of the god of the land, he had inadvertently offended. "The ways of the Lord are those of every honest man's heart," replied the patriarch. "Is there no sacrifice I could offer? Behold all I have! Let it be burned! Nay, I will lie myself upon the altar willingly." "Remember our Psalmist," Ben Yusef would reply. "'Thou delightest not in sacrifice and offering, else would I give it. The sacrifices of God are a broken and contrite heart.' If you have sinned, my son, confess it in your thought, and let us pray the Lord for his mercy."