at 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."

A slight tremor shook the dying girl. She closed her eyes for a short
time and a sunny smile hovered around her lips.

She lay in this attitude so long that Nun feared death had claimed her
and, holding the medicine in his hand, listened to hear her breathing.

Kasana did not seem to notice it; but when she finally opened her eyes,
she held out her hand for the cordial, drank it, and then began again:

"It seemed just as if I had seen him, Hosea. He wore the panoply of war
just as he did the first time he took me into his arms. I was a little
thing and felt afraid of him, he looked so grave, and my nurse had told
me that he had slain a great many of our