Joshua, thoroughly incensed, exclaimed:  “If this is the whole truth, wife of Hur, my father has given me a false report; for according to what I heard from him, the hapless woman made her last confession only in the presence of those who love me; not in yours.  And she was right to shun you—­you would never have understood her.”

Here he saw a smile of superiority hover around Miriam’s lips; but he repelled it, as he went on: 

“Ah, your intellect is tenfold keener than poor Kasana’s ever was.  But your heart, which was open to the Most High, had no room for love.  It will grow old and cease to beat without having learned the feeling.  And, spite of your flashing eyes, I will tell you you are more than a woman, you are a prophetess.  I cannot boast of gifts so lofty.  I am merely a plain man, who understands the art of fighting better than that of foretelling the future.  Yet I can see what is to come.  You will foster the hatred of me that glows in your breast, and will also implant it in your husband’s heart and zealously strive to fan it there.  And I know why.  The fiery ambition which consumes you will not suffer you to be the wife of a man who is second to any other.  You refuse to call me by the name I owe to you.  But if hatred and arrogance do not stifle in your breast the one feeling that still unites us—­love for our people, the day will come when you will voluntarily approach and, unasked, by the free impulse of your heart, call me ‘Joshua.’”

With these words he took leave of Miriam and her husband by a short wave of the hand, and vanished in the darkness of the night.

Hur gazed gloomily after him in silence until the footsteps of the belated guest had died away in the sleeping camp; then the ill-repressed wrath of the grave man, who had hitherto regarded his young wife with tender admiration, knew no bounds.

With two long strides he stood directly before her as she gazed with a troubled look into the fire, her face even paler than his own.  His voice had lost its metallic harmony, and sounded shrill and sharp as he exclaimed: 

“I had the courage to woo a maiden who supposed herself to be nearer to God than other women, and now that she has become my wife she makes me atone for such presumption.”

“Atone?” escaped Miriam’s livid lips, and a defiant glance blazed at him from her black eyes.  But, undismayed, he continued, grasping her hand with so firm a pressure that it hurt her: 

“Aye, you make me atone for it!—­Shame on me, if I permit this disgraceful hour to be followed by similar ones.”

Miriam strove to wrest her hand from his clasp, but he would not release it, and went on: