While Kenkenes examined them in detail, a long, in-drawn breath of wonder from the circle of spectators caused him to look at the alighting owner of the litter. He took a backward step and halted, amazed. Before him was a woman of heroic proportions, taller, with the exception of himself, than any man in the crowd. Upon her, at first glance, was to be discerned the stamp of great age, yet she was as straight as a column and her hair was heavy and midnight-black. Hers was the Semitic cast of countenance, the features sharply chiseled, but without that aggressiveness that emphasizes the outline of a withered face. Every passing year had left its mark on her, but she had grown old not as others do. Here was flesh compromising with age--accepting its majesty, defying its decay--a sublunar assumption of immortality. There was no longer any suggestion of femininity; the idea was dread power and unearthly grace. Of such nature might the sexless archangels partake. "Holy Amen!" one of the awed bystanders exclaimed in a whisper to his neighbor. "Who is this?" "A princess from Punt," [2] the neighbor surmised. "A priestess from Babylon," another hazarded. "Nay, ye are all wrong," quavered an old man who had been looking at the new-comers under the elbows of the crowd. "She is an Israelite." "Thou hast a cataract, old man," was the scornful reply from some one near by. "She is no slave." "Aye," went on the unsteady voice, "I know her. She was the favorite woman of Queen Neferari Thermuthis. She has not been out of the Delta where her people live since the good queen died forty years ago. She must be well-nigh a hundred years old. Aye, I should know her by her stature. It is of a truth the Lady Miriam." At the sound of his mistress' name one of the bearers turned and shot a sharp glance at the speaker. Instantly the old man fell back, saying, as a sneer of contempt ran through the rabble at the intelligence his words conveyed: "Anger them not. They have the evil eye." Kenkenes had guessed the nationality of the strangers immediately, but had doubted the correctness of his surmise, because of their noble mien. If he suffered any disappointment in hearing proof of their identity, it was immediately nullified by the joy his artist-soul took in the stately Hebrew woman. He forgot the mission that urged him to the temple and, permitting the shifting, restless crowd to surround him, he lingered, thinking. This proud disdain must mark his goddess of stone in the Arabian hills, this majesty and power; but there must be youth and fire in the place of this ancient calm. A porter that stood beside him, emboldened by barley beer and the growing disapproval among the on-lookers, cried: "Ha! by the rags of my fathers, she outshines her masters, the brickmaking hag!"