ithin. The course of the malady had been
terribly swift in the three years. Conscious of her appearance,
with the refined instincts of her nature, she kept her whole person
habitually covered. Seldom as possible she permitted even Tirzah to
see her.

This morning she was taking the air with bared head, knowing there
was no one to be shocked by the exposure. The light was not full,
but enough to show the ravages to which she had been subject.
Her hair was snow-white and unmanageably coarse, falling over
her back and shoulders like so much silver wire. The eyelids,
the lips, the nostrils, the flesh of the cheeks, were either gone
or reduced to fetid rawness. The neck was a mass of ash-colored
scales. One hand lay outside the folds of her habit rigid as
that of a skeleton; the nails had been eaten away; the joints of
the fingers, if not bare to the bone, were swollen knots crusted
with red secretion. Head, face, neck, and hand indicated all too
plainly the condition of the whole body. Seeing her thus, it was
easy to understand how the once fair widow of the princely Hur
had been able to maintain her incognito so well through such a
period of years.

When the sun would gild the crest of Olivet and the Mount of
Offence with light sharper and more brilliant in that old land
than in the West, she knew Amrah would come, first to the well,
then to a stone midway the well and the foot of the hill on which
she had her abode, and that the good servant would there deposit
the food she carried in the basket, and fill the water-jar afresh
for the day. Of her former plentitude of happiness, that brief
visit was all that remained to the unfortunate. She could then ask
about her son, and be told of his welfare, with such bits of news
concerning him as the messenger could glean. Usually the information
was meagre enough, yet comforting; at times she heard he was at home;
then she would issue from her dreary cell at break of day, and sit
till noon, and from noon to set of sun, a motionless figure draped
in white, looking, statue-like, invariably to one point--over the
Temple to the spot under the rounded sky where the old house stood,
dear in memory, and dearer because he was there. Nothing else was
left her. Tirzah she counted of the dead; and as for herself,
she simply waited the end, knowing every hour of life was an
hour of dying--happily, of painless dying.

The things of nature about the hill to keep her sensitive to
the world'