"Give it!" she stammered out, and they drew closer together.

She kept advancing, clothed in her white trailing simar, and with her
large eyes fastened on the veil. Matho gazed at her, dazzled by the
splendours of her head, and, holding out the zaimph towards her, was
about to enfold her in an embrace. She was stretching out her
arms. Suddenly she stopped, and they stood looking at each other,
open-mouthed.

Then without understanding the meaning of his solicitation a horror
seized upon her. Her delicate eyebrows rose, her lips opened; she
trembled. At last she struck one of the brass pateras which hung at the
corners of the red mattress, crying:

"To the rescue! to the rescue! Back, sacrilegious man! infamous and
accursed! Help, Taanach, Kroum, Ewa, Micipsa, Schaoul!"

And the scared face of Spendius, appearing in the wall between the clay
flagons, cried out these words:

"Fly! they are hastening hither!"

A great tumult came upwards shaking the staircases, and a flood of
people, women, serving-men, and slaves, rushed into the room with
stakes, tomahawks, cutlasses, and daggers. They were nearly paralysed
with indignation on perceiving a man; the female servants uttered
funeral wailings, and the eunuchs grew pale beneath their black skins.

Matho was standing behind the balustrades. With the zaimph which was
wrapped about him, he looked like a sidereal god surrounded by the