ed me
to summon you and bestow on you the name 'Help of Jehovah'--and you,
no longer Hosea, but Joshua, will obey the mandate of God and His
prophetess."

Here the warrior interrupted the maiden's words, to which he had
listened earnestly, yet with increasing disappointment:

"Ay, I have obeyed you and the Most High. But what it cost me you
disdain to ask. Your story has reached the present time, yet you have
made no mention of the days following my mother's death, during which
you were our guest in Tanis. Have you forgotten what first your eyes and
then your lips confessed? Have the day of your departure and the evening
on the sea, when you bade me hope for and remember you, quite vanished
from your memory? Did the hatred Moses implanted in your heart kill love
as well as every other feeling?"

"Love?" asked Miriam, raising her large eyes mournfully to his. "Oh no.
How could I forget that time, the happiest of my life! Yet from the
day Moses returned from the wilderness by God's command to release the
people from bondage--three months after my separation from you--I have
taken no note of years and months, days and nights."

"Then you have forgotten those also?" Hosea asked harshly.

"Not so," Miriam answered, gazing beseechingly into his face. "The love
that grew up in the child and did not wither in the maiden's heart,
cannot be killed; but whoever consecrates one's life to the Lord...."

Here she suddenly paused, raised her hands and eyes rapturously, as
if borne out of herself, and cried imploringly: "Thou art near me,
Omnipotent One, and seest my heart! Thou knowest why Miriam took no note
of days and years, and asked nothing save to be Thy instrument until
her people, who are, also, this man's people, received what Thou didst
promise."

During this appeal, which rose from the inmost depths of the maiden's
heart, the light wind which precedes the coming of dawn had risen,
and the foliage in the thick crown of the sycamore above Miriam's head
rustled; but Hosea fairly devoured with his eyes the tall majestic
figure, half illumined, half veiled by the faint glimmering light. What
he heard and saw seemed like a miracle. The lofty future she anticipated
for her people, and which must be realized ere she would permit herself
to yield to the desire of her own heart, he believed that he was hearing
to them as a messenger of the Lord. As if rapt by the noble enthusiasm
of her soul, he rushed toward her, seized her