“But you have forgotten the sunrise coming to you. Each day, for months, as you have journeyed eastward, you have gained in health of body and mind.”
“Dost thou mean that God blesses those who plunge headlong to destruction, as the possessed swine that ran violently into the sea?”
“Can not my father let faith silence the disquietings of his wild fancies? The memory of a past pain, though a persistent, is often a false teacher.”
“Oh, I do remember. Some memories seem to scorch the very substance of my brain! I pray when such come that God give me eternal forgetfulness. I’d rather be an idiot than have the power of coherent thinking filled with such reminiscences!”
“Ah, if we all, always, had the wisdom, while gazing into our dark, deep pools, to gaze until we saw at their bottoms the image of the sky above!”
“Well said, daughter! Bozrah is a dark pool! I saw there only an image of the sky, and that very far away!”
The day of the foregoing they were wandering along the flowery banks and over the forest-covered hills that undulated away from Jabbock’s ravine. As they moved along the maiden plucked a hyacinth blossom and affectionately fastened it on her father’s bosom; just where he was wont to wear, when in England, his knight’s cross.
“Rizpah once placed a lotus there; it made me drunk; a votary of pleasure, mad; but Miriamne, her daughter, places there the flower of serene, deathless affection! Sweet, thou art my good angel, the flower says to Gerash!”
“Why, father! I do not understand!”