“I cannot die so, I cannot!  How it happened; why I sacrificed all, all....  I must atone for it; I will not complain, if he only learns how it came to pass.  Oh, Nun, dear old Nun, who gave me the lamb when I was a little thing—­I loved it so dearly—­and you, Ephraim, my dear boy, I will tell you everything.”

Here a painful fit of coughing interrupted her; but as soon as she recovered her breath, she turned to Miriam, and called in a tone which so plainly expressed bitter dislike, that it would have surprised any one who knew her kindly nature: 

“But you, yonder,—­you tall woman with the deep voice who are a physician, you lured him from Tanis, from his soldiers and from me.  He, he obeyed your summons.  And you . . . . you became another’s wife; probably after his arrival .... yes!  For when Ephraim summoned him, he called you a maiden . . .  I don’t know whether this caused him, Hosea, pain ....  But there is one thing I do know, and that is that I want to confess something and must do so, ere it is too late....  And no one must hear it save those who love him, and I—­do you hear—­I love him, love him better than aught else on earth!  But you?  You have a husband, and a God whose commands you eagerly obey—­you say so yourself.  What can Hosea be to you?  So I beseech you to leave us.  I have met few who repelled me, but you—­your voice, your eyes—­they pierce me to the heart—­and if you were near I could not speak as I must.... and oh, talking hurts me so!  But before you go—­you are a leech—­let me know this one thing—­I have many messages to leave for him ere I die....  Will it kill me to talk?”

Again the prophetess found no other words in answer except the brief:  “It is as you say,” and this time they sounded harsh and ominous.

While wavering between the duty which, as a physician, she owed the sufferer and the impulse not to refuse the request of a dying woman, she read in old Nun’s eyes an entreaty to obey Kasana’s wish, and with drooping head left the tent.  But the bitter words of the hapless girl pursued her and spoiled the day which had begun so gloriously and also many a later hour; nay, to her life’s end she could not understand why, in the presence of this poor, dying woman, she had been overpowered by the feeling that she was her inferior and must take a secondary place.

As soon as Kasana was left alone with Nun and Ephraim, and the latter had flung himself on his knees beside her couch, while the old man kissed her brow, and bowed his white head to listen to her low words, she began: 

“I feel better now.  That tall woman.... those gloomy brows that meet in the middle.... those nightblack eyes.... they glow with so fierce a fire, yet are so cold....  That woman.... did Hosea love her, father?  Tell me; I am not asking from idle curiosity!”

“He honored her,” replied the old man in a troubled tone, “as did our whole nation; for she has a lofty spirit, and our God suffers her to hear His voice; but you, my darling, have been dear to him from childhood, I know.”