The story then centers around her personal conflict between her desire to retrieve the Zaimph and her horror of the barbarian who has fled the city without returning it. Finally, under religious compulsion to save Carthage by regaining its sacred talisman, she makes her way to the Libyan’s tent. She has been instructed by the high priest to resist Matho in no way, and consequently she submits to his embrace. Salammbo, who was accustomed to eunuchs, yielded to amazement at the strength of this man.... A feeling of lassitude overpowered her ... all the time she felt that she was in the grip of some doom, that she had reached a supreme and irrevocable moment.... Some power from within and at the same time above her, a command from the gods, forced her to yield to it; she was borne up as on clouds, and fell back swooning.[35] But on being questioned subsequently by her father as to what occurred, she is evasive. Salammbo told no more, perhaps through shame, or else because in her extreme ingenuousness she attached but little importance to the soldier’s embraces.... Then she examined the Zaimph and when she had well considered it, she was surprised to find that she did not experience that ecstasy which she had once pictured to herself. Her dream was accomplished; yet she was melancholy.[36] Although she does not see Matho again and feels only hatred for him “... the anguish from which she formerly suffered had left her, and a strange calm possessed her. Her eyes were not so restless, and shone with limpid fire.... She did not keep such long or such rigid fasts now.... In spite of her hatred of him, she would have liked to see Matho again.”[37] This is a master’s account of the effect of physical release on an unawakened girl. Considerably later Salammbo is married, according to her father’s plan, to the effete prince, Narr’ Havas. He wore a flower-painted robe fringed with gold at the hem; his braided hair was caught up at his ears by two arrows of silver.... As she watched him, she was wrapped about with a host of vague thoughts. This young man with his gentle voice and woman’s figure charmed her by the grace of his person and seemed like an elder sister sent by the Baalim to protect her. She did not understand how this young man could ever become her master. The thought of Matho came to her and she could not resist the desire to learn what had become of him.... Although she prayed every day to Tanit for Matho’s death, her horror of the Libyan was growing less. She was confusedly aware that there was something almost like religion in the hatred [sic] with which he had persecuted her, and she wished to see in Narr’ Havas a reflection, as it were, of a violence which still bemused her.[38] These two passages indicate quite the opposite of homosexual emotion.