A sound like the snapping of fingers came from the gallery over the
pavilion. Instantly, with one of her movements of bird-like swiftness,
Salome stood erect. The next moment she rapidly passed up a flight of
steps leading to the gallery, and coming to the front of it she leaned
over, smiled upon the tetrarch, and, with an air of almost childlike
naivete, pronounced these words:

"I ask my lord to give me, placed upon a charger, the head of--" She
hesitated, as if not certain of the name; then said: "The head of
Iaokanann!"

The tetrarch sank back in his chair as if stunned.

He had bound himself by his promise to her; and the people awaited his
next movement. But the death that night of some conspicuous man that had
been predicted to him by Phanuel,--what if, by bringing it upon another,
he could avert it from himself, thought Antipas. If Iaokanann was in
very truth the Elias so much talked of, he would have power to protect
himself; and if he were only an ordinary man, his murder was of no
importance.

Mannaeus stood beside his chair, and read his master's thoughts.
Vitellius beckoned him to his side and gave him an order for the
execution, to be transmitted to the soldiers placed on guard over the
dungeon. This execution would be a relief, he thought. In a few moments
all would be over!

But for once Mannaeus did not perform a commission satisfactorily. He
left the hall but soon returned, in a state of great perturbation.