One afternoon his ambassadors returned, and announced that they had brought her. She was resting after the journey, and would visit him on the morrow. He appointed their meeting in the Palace of the Saraph-Bashi. Then, unable to rest, he mounted the hill of the citadel and saw an auspicious golden glow over the mosques and houses of Cairo, illumining even the desert and the Pyramids. He stood watching the sun sink lower and lower, till suddenly it went out like a snuffed candle. XIII On the morrow he left his mean brick dwelling in the Jewry, and received her alone in a marble-paved chamber in the Palace, the walls adorned with carvings of flowers and birds, minutely worked, the ceiling with arabesques formed of thin strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, wrought into capricious patterns. "Peace, O Messiah!" Her smile was dazzling, and there was more of gaiety than of reverence in her voice. Her white teeth flashed 'twixt laughing lips. Sabbataï's heart was beating furiously at the sight of the lady of his dreams. She was clad in shimmering white Italian silk, which, draped tightly about her bosom, showed her as some gleaming statue. Bracelets glittered on her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of the home. "Peace, O Melisselda," he replied involuntarily. "Nay, wherefore Melisselda?" she cried, ascending to the _leewán_ on which he stood. "And wherefore Messiah?" he answered. "I have seen thee in visions--'tis the face, the figure, the prophetic beauty--But wherefore Melisselda?" He laughed into her eyes and hummed softly:-- "'From her bath she arose, Pure and white as the snows, Melisselda.'" "Ay, that did I, when I washed off the convent. But my name is Sarah." "Nay, not Sarah, but Saraï--my Princess!" His voice was hoarse and faltering. This strange new sense of romance that, like a callow-bird, had been stirring in his breast ever since he had heard of her quest of him, spread its wings and soared heavenwards. She had been impure--but her impurity swathed her in mystic seductiveness. The world's law bound her no more than him--she was free and elemental, a spirit to match his own; purified perpetually by its own white fire. She came nearer, and her eyes wrapped him in flame. "My Prince!" she cried. He drew backward towards the divan. "Nay, but I must know no woman."