While making this reply Hur had gazed at his wife with stern dignity, as if admonishing discretion, and the look seemed to have effected its purpose; for Miriam had alternately flushed and paled as she listened; nay, she even detained the guest by beckoning him with a trembling hand to approach, as though she desired to soothe him.

“Let me say one thing more,” she began, drawing a long breath, “that you may not misunderstand my meaning.  I call everyone our friend who devotes himself to the cause of the people, and how self-sacrificingly you intend to do this, Hur has informed me.  It was your confidence in Pharaoh’s favor that parted us—­therefore I know how to prize your firm and decisive breach with the Egyptians, but I did not correctly estimate the full grandeur of this deed until I learned that not only long custom, but other bonds, united you to the foe.”

“What is the meaning of these words?” replied Joshua, convinced that she had just fitted to the bowstring another shaft intended to wound him.  But Miriam, unheeding the question, calmly continued with a defiant keenness of glance that contradicted her measured speech: 

“After the Lord’s guidance had delivered us from the enemy, the Red Sea washed ashore the most beautiful woman we have seen for a long time.  I bandaged the wound a Hebrew woman dealt her and she acknowledged that her heart was filled with love for you, and that on her dying bed she regarded you as the idol of her soul.”

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.’”