The dying girl’s eyes began to glitter with a restless light, and she gasped in louder tones, nay with a firmness that surprised the others: 

“You are Miriam, the woman who sent for Hosea.”  And when the other answered promptly and proudly:  “It is as you say!” Kasana continued: 

“And you possess striking, imperious beauty, and much influence.  He obeyed your summons, and you—­you consented to wed another?”

Again the prophetess answered, this time with gloomy earnestness:  “It is as you say.”

The dying girl closed her eyes once more, and a strange proud smile hovered around her lips.  But it soon vanished and a great and painful restlessness seized upon her.  The fingers of her little hands, her lips, nay, even her eyelids moved perpetually, and her smooth, narrow forehead contracted as if some great thought occupied her mind.

At last the ideas that troubled her found utterance and, as if roused from her repose, she exclaimed in terrified accents: 

“You are Ephraim, who seemed like his son, and the old man is Nun, his dear father.  There you stand and will live on. . . .  But I—­I . . .  Oh, it is so hard to leave the light. . . .  Anubis will lead me before the judgment seat of Osiris.  My heart will be weighed, and then. . . .”

Here she shuddered and opened and closed her trembling hands; but she soon regained her composure and began to speak again.  Miriam, however, sternly forbade this, because it would hasten her death.

Then the sufferer, summoning all her strength, exclaimed hastily, as loudly as her voice would permit, after measuring the prophetess’ tall figure with a long glance:  “You wish to prevent me from doing my duty—­you?”

There had been a slight touch of mockery in the question; but Kasana doubtless felt that it was necessary to spare her strength; for she continued far more quietly, as though talking to herself: 

“I cannot die so, I cannot!  How it happened; why I sacrificed all, all. . . .  I must atone for it; I will not complain, if he only learns how it came to pass.  Oh, Nun, dear old Nun, who gave me the lamb when I was a little thing—­I loved it so dearly—­and you, Ephraim, my dear boy, I will tell you everything.”

Here a painful fit of coughing interrupted her; but as soon as she recovered her breath, she turned to Miriam, and called in a tone which so plainly expressed bitter dislike, that it would have surprised any one who knew her kindly nature: 

“But you, yonder,—­you tall woman with the deep voice who are a physician, you lured him from Tanis, from his soldiers and from me.  He, he obeyed your summons.  And you . . . you became another’s wife; probably after his arrival . . . yes!  For when Ephraim summoned him, he called you a maiden . . .  I don’t know whether this caused him, Hosea, pain. . . .  But there is one thing I do know, and that is that I want to confess something and must do so, ere it is too late.