“But mark thou!” she continued passively.  “If thou wouldst save her, think upon some other way, for thou mayest not wed her.  Jehovah planteth the faith of Abraham anew in Israel.  In Rachel and in Rachel’s house it died not during the hundred years of the bondage.  Therefore the name is godly.  Of her, what would thy heart say?  Hath she not beauty, hath she not wisdom, hath she not great winsomeness?  There is none like her in these days among all the children of Abraham.  To her Israel looketh for example, for, since she compelleth by her grace, those who behold her will consider whatever she doeth as good.  Great is the reward of him who can direct and directeth aright, but shall he not appear abominable in the sight of the Lord if he useth his power to lead astray?  Lo! if she wed thee, to her people it will seem that she would say:  ’Behold, this man is fair in my sight, and it is good for the chosen of the Lord to take the idolater into his bosom.’  There is a multitude in Israel, which, like sheep, follow blindly as they are led.  Great will be the labor to engrave the worship of the Lord God in their hearts, when all the powers of Israel shall strive to do that thing for them.  How shall there be any success if Moses and the appointed of the Lord bid them worship, while the husband or wife that dwelleth in their tent saith ‘Worship not’?  To these, Rachel’s marriage with thee would be justification and incentive to incline toward idolaters and idols.  Then there are the wise and discerning who know that Rachel hath turned away from the best among her people.  How, then, shall she be fallen in their sight if she wed with an idolater?

“She knoweth all these things and she keepeth a firm hold upon herself, but she hath not said these things to thee lest her strength fail her.”

And thus was the mystery explained to him.

“Thou bowest down to a beetle,” she went on without pausing.  “Thou worshipest a cat; thou offerest up sacrifice to an image and conservest abominable and heathen rites.  Thou art an idolater, and as such thou art not for Rachel.  And yet, this further:  if thou canst become a worshiper of the true God, thou shalt take her.  Never have I seen an Egyptian won over to the faith of Abraham, but there approacheth a time of wonders and I shall not marvel.”

To Egypt its faith was paramount.  Israel in its palmiest days was not more vigilantly, jealously fanatical than Egypt.  Every worshiper was a zealot; every ecclesiast an inquisitor.  Church and State were inseparably united; law was fused with religion; science and the arts were governed by hieratic canons.

The individual ate, slept and labored in the name of the gods, and national matters proceeded as the Pantheon directed by the ecclesiastical mouthpiece.

Life was an ephemeral preface to the interminable and actual existence of immortality.  Temporal things were transient and only of probationary value.  The tomb was the ultimate and hoped-for, infinite abiding-place.