her cheeks were
pale, her eyes were tearless and her bearing was as erect as ever.

She left to Hur to explain to the lover whom she had forever resigned
what she had granted him, and when Joshua heard it, he started back as
though a gulf yawned at his feet.

His lips were bloodless as he stared at the unequally matched pair. A
jeering laugh seemed the only fitting answer to such a surprise, but
Miriam's grave face helped him to repress it and conceal the tumult of
his soul by trivial words.

But he felt that he could not long succeed in maintaining a successful
display of indifference, so he took leave of Miriam. He must greet his
father, he said hastily, and induce him to summon the elders.

Ere he finished several shepherds hurried up, disputing wrathfully and
appealed to Hur to decide what place in the procession belonged to each
tribe. He followed them, and as soon as Miriam found herself alone with
Joshua, she said softly, yet earnestly, with beseeching eyes:

"A hasty deed was needful to sever the tie that bound us, but a loftier
hope unites us. As I sacrificed what was dearest to my heart to remain
faithful to my God and people, do you, too, renounce everything to which
your soul clings. Obey the Most High, who called you Joshua! This hour
transformed the sweetest joy to bitter grief; may it be the salvation of
our people! Remain a son of the race which gave you your father and
mother! Be what the Lord called you to become, a leader of your race! If
you insist on fulfilling your oath to Pharaoh, and tell the elders the
promises with which you came, you will win them over, I know. Few will
resist you, but of those few the first will surely be your own father. I
can hear him raise his voice loudly and angrily against his own dear son;
but if you close your ears even to his warning, the people will follow
your summons instead of God's, and you will rule the Hebrews as a mighty
man. But when the time comes that the Egyptian casts his promises to the
winds, when you see your people in still worse bondage than before and
behold them turn from the God of their fathers to again worship
animal-headed idols, your father's curse will overtake you, the wrath of
the Most High will strike the blinded man, and despair will be the lot of
him who led to ruin the weak masses for whose shield the Most High chose
him. So I, a feeble woman, yet the servant of the Most High and the
maiden who was dearer to you than life, cry in t