After a little she spoke.

“I had not dreamed that there was such artifice in Miriam.  She told me of a nobleman that had served God and Israel, and was in need of comfort in his tent.  But she bridled her tongue and governed her expression so cunningly, that I did not dream the hero was mine—­mine!”

Then on a sudden she disengaged herself from his arms and gaining her feet, cried out with her hands over her blushing face: 

“And now, I know why she and Hur—­O I know why they came with me, and brought me to the tent!”

“Nay, now; may I not guess, also?” Kenkenes laughed, though a little puzzled over her evident confusion.  “They had a mind to peep and spy upon our love-making.  Perchance they are without this instant; come hither and let us not disappoint them.”

She dropped her hands and looked at him with flaming cheeks and smiling eyes.  There was more in her look than he could fathom, but he did not puzzle longer when she came back to her place and hid her face away from him.

It is the love of riper years, that makes the lips of lovers silent.  But Kenkenes and Rachel were very young and wholly demonstrative, and they had need of many words to supplement the testimony of caresses.  They had much to tell and they left no avowal unmade.

But at last Kenkenes’ voice wearied and Rachel noted it.  So in her pretty authoritative way, she stroked his lashes down and bade him sleep.  When she removed her hands and clasped them above his head, his eyes did not open.

As she bent over him, she noted with a great sweep of tenderness how young he was.  In all her relations with Kenkenes she had seen him in the manliest roles.  She had depended upon him, looked up to him, and had felt secure in his protection.  Now she contemplated a face from which content had erased the mature lines that care had drawn.  The curve of his lips, the length of the drooping lashes, the roundness of cheek, and the softness of throat, were youthful—­boyish.  With this enlightenment her love for him experienced a transfiguration.  She seemed to grow older than he; the maternal element leaped to the fore; their positions were instantly reversed.  It was hers to care for him!

After a long time, his arms relaxed about her, and she undid them and disposed them in easy position.  Lifting the fillet from his brow, she smoothed out the mark it had made and settled the cushions more softly under his head.  From the heap of coverings she took the amplest and the softest and spread it over him.  Remembering that the wind from the sea blew shrewdly at night, she laid rugs about the edges of the tent which fluttered in the breeze and returned again to his side.

After another space of rapt contemplation of his unconscious face she went forth and drew the entrance together behind her.

The next daybreak was the happiest Israel had known in a hundred years.  Egypt, overthrown and humbled, was behind them; God was with them, and Canaan was just ahead—­perhaps only beyond the horizon.  Few but would have laughed at the glory of Babylonia, Assyria and the great powers.