the brief:
"It is as you say," and this time they sounded harsh and ominous.

While wavering between the duty which, as a physician, she owed the
sufferer and the impulse not to refuse the request of a dying woman,
she read in old Nun's eyes an entreaty to obey Kasana's wish, and with
drooping head left the tent. But the bitter words of the hapless girl
pursued her and spoiled the day which had begun so gloriously and also
many a later hour; nay, to her life's end she could not understand why,
in the presence of this poor, dying woman, she had been overpowered by
the feeling that she was her inferior and must take a secondary place.

As soon as Kasana was left alone with Nun and Ephraim, and the latter
had flung himself on his knees beside her couch, while the old man
kissed her brow, and bowed his white head to listen to her low words,
she began:

"I feel better now. That tall woman... those gloomy brows that meet in
the middle... those nightblack eyes... they glow with so fierce a fire,
yet are so cold.... That woman... did Hosea love her, father? Tell me; I
am not asking from idle curiosity!"

"He honored her," replied the old man in a troubled tone, "as did our
whole nation; for she has a lofty spirit, and our God suffers her
to hear His voice; but you, my darling, have been dear to him from
childhood, I know."

A slight tremor shook the dying girl. She closed her eyes for a short
time and a sunny smile hovered around her lips.

She lay in this attitude so long that Nun feared death had claimed her
and, holding the medicine in his hand, listened to hear her breathing.

Kasana did not seem to notice it; but when she finally opened her eyes,
she held out her hand for the cordial, drank it, and then began again:

"It seemed just as if I had seen him, Hosea. He wore the panoply of war
just as he did the first time he took me into his arms. I was a little
thing and felt afraid of him, he looked so grave, and my nurse had told
me that he had slain a great many of our foes. Yet I was glad when he
came and grieved when he went away. So the years passed, and love grew
with my growth. My young heart was so full of him, so full.... Even when
they forced me to wed another, and after I had become a widow."

The last words had been scarcely audible, and she rested some time ere
she continued:

"Hosea knows all this, except how anxious I was when he was in the
field, and how I longed for him ere he returned. At last, at