“He taught me also that we alone were the people whom the Lord had chosen, we and no other.  Then for the first time I was filled with pride at being a descendant of Abraham, and every Hebrew seemed a brother, every daughter of Israel a sister.  Now, too, I perceived how cruelly my people had been enslaved and tortured.  I had been blind to their suffering, but Moses opened my eyes and sowed in my heart hate, intense hate of their oppressors, and from this hate sprang love for the victims.  I vowed to follow my brother and await the summons of my God.  And lo, he did not tarry and Jehovah’s voice spoke to me as with tongues.

“Old Rachel died.  At Moses’ bidding I gave up my solitary life and accepted the invitation of Aaron and Amminadab.

“So I became a guest in their household, yet led a separate life among them all.  They did not interfere with me, and the sycamore here on their land became my special property.  Beneath its shadow God commanded 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.”