And he turned and went to an interior chamber. "O Astoreth!" groaned the Phœnician. His lips grew blue, and his hands trembled so that he was hardly able to wrap up the goblet. A couple of days later Dagon sailed down with his goblet to Sarah's house. He was arrayed in robes interwoven with gold; in his thick beard were glass globulets from which issued perfumes, and he had fastened two plumes to his head. "Beautiful Sarah," began he, "may Jehovah pour on thy family as many blessings as there are waters in the Nile at present! We Phœnicians and ye Jews are brethren and neighbors. I am inflamed with such ardor of love for thee that didst thou not belong to our most worthy lord I would give Gideon ten talents for thee, and would take thee for my lawful wife. So enamored am I." "May God preserve me," answered Sarah, "from wanting another lord beyond the one who is mine at this moment. But whence, worthy Dagon, did the desire come to thee to-day of visiting our lord's servant?" "I will tell thee the truth, as if thou wert Tamara, my wife, who, a real daughter of Sidon, though she brought me a large dowry, is old now and not worthy to take off thy sandals." "In the honey flowing from thy lips there is much wormwood," put in Sarah. "Let the honey," replied Dagon, sitting down, "be for thee and let the wormwood poison my heart. Our lord Prince Rameses--may he live through eternity!--has the mouth of a lion and the keenness of a vulture. He has seen fit to rent his estate to me. This has filled my stomach with delight; but he does not trust me, so I lay awake whole nights from anxiety, I only sigh and cover my bed with tears, in which bed would that thou wert resting with me, O Sarah, instead of my wife Tamara, who cannot rouse desire in me any longer." "That is not what thou wishest to say," interrupted the blushing Sarah. "I know not what I wish to say, since I have looked on thee, and since our lord, examining my activity on his estates, struck with a cane and took health from my scribe who was collecting dues there from tenants. And these dues were not for me. Sarah, but for our lord. It is not I who will eat the figs and wheaten bread from those lands, but thou and our lord. I have given money to our lord and jewels to thee. Why then should the low Egyptian rabble impoverish our lord and thee, Sarah? To show how greatly thou rousest my desire and that from these estates I wish nothing but reserve all for thee and our lord, I give this goblet of pure gold set with jewels and covered with carving at which the gods themselves would be astonished." Then Dagon drew forth from the cloth the goblet refused by Prince Rameses.