“But it is because you are a sinner that Heaven denies you its blessing.”

“No—­no, a thousand times no!” cried Miriam.  “No god has ever troubled himself about me.  And if I am not good, why should I be when nothing but evil ever has fallen to my share?  Do you know who I am and how I became so?  I was wicked, perhaps, when both my parents were slain in their pilgrimage hither?  Why, I was then no more than six years old, and what is a child of that age?  But still I very well remember that there were many camels grazing near our house, and horses too that belonged to us, and that on a hand that often caressed me—­it was my mother’s hand—­a large jewel shone.  I had a black slave too that obeyed me; when she and I did not agree I used to hang on to her grey woolly hair and beat her.  Who knows what may have become of her?  I did not love her, but if I had her now, how kind I would be to her.  And now for twelve years I myself have eaten the bread of servitude, and have kept Senator Petrus’s goats, and if I ventured to show myself at a festival among the free maidens, they would turn me out and pull the wreath out of my hair.  And am I to be thankful?  What for, I wonder?  And pious?  What god has taken any care of me?  Call me an evil demon—­call me so!  But if Petrus and your Paulus there say that He who is up above us and who let me grow up to such a lot is good, they tell a lie.  God is cruel, and it is just like Him to put it into your heart to throw stones and scare me away from your well.”

With these words she burst out into bitter sobs, and her features worked with various and passionate distortion.

Hermas felt compassion for the weeping Miriam.  He had met her a hundred times and she had shown herself now haughty, now discontented, now exacting and now wrathful, but never before soft or sad.  To-day, for the first time, she had opened her heart to him; the tears which disfigured her countenance gave her character a value which it had never before had in his eyes, and when he saw her weak and unhappy he felt ashamed of his hardness.  He went up to her kindly and said:  “You need not cry; come to the well again always, I will not prevent you.”

His deep voice sounded soft and kind as he spoke, but she sobbed more passionately than before, almost convulsively, and she tried to speak but she could not.  Trembling in every slender limb, shaken with grief, and overwhelmed with sorrow, the slight shepherdess stood before him, and he felt as if he must help her.  His passionate pity cut him to the heart and fettered his by no means ready tongue.

As he could find no word of comfort, he took the water-gourd in his left hand and laid his right, in which he had hitherto held it, gently on her shoulder.  She started, but she let him do it; he felt her warm breath; he would have drawn back, but he felt as if he could not; he hardly knew whether she was crying or laughing while she let his hand rest on her black waving hair.