“I know it all! The maidens of our fraternity have been declaring for a month past they’d have me this Christmas at our Temple on the Hill, if they must needs carry me thither!”
“And they knew you were drooping? Who told them? Not I.”
“Love has quick eyes, and my sisters love indeed!
“But, Miriamne, you surely will not risk your life, so precious to all, by going forth to-day?”
“The holly, over-canopying the couch they bear, says to me: ‘Yea, go.’ I told them the secret of the holly, and how those ancient Romans, thinking their deities largely sylvan, cherished this shrub, so persistently evergreen, in the belief that it afforded a safe and certain abiding place for their gods in bitter, biting days of winter. The maidens remember their lesson.”
And shortly after, all went forth toward the temple, the physically weak but spiritually strong woman borne by her followers in a sort of triumph, and Cornelius leading; the latter, that day was one of the happiest, proudest men in all Syria. He rejoiced and exulted in being companion of a woman such as Miriamne was.
Miriamne entered the temple to find a vast congregation awaiting her. There was a ripple of excitement, a deep murmuring of satisfied voices almost reaching the proportion of a masculine outbreak of applause, as she appeared. Contentment was depicted on all faces, on many real happiness. Neither was it transitory; there was a throbbing of gladness running back and forth, rising higher and higher, until it finally broke out into an impromptu “Gloria in excelsis!” Then followed a scripture lesson:
“And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.
“And he read therein before the street that was before the water-gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of the people were attentive unto the book of the law.”
And now the attention of all was drawn to the sound of footsteps in the throbbings of a march, keeping time to the tones of the organ and the flourishings of cymbals. Nigh an hundred Syrian maidens, wearing girdles and crowns of evergreen, moved with graceful evolutions from the temple’s east entrance and quickly formed in a crescent nigh to Cornelius and Miriamne. They paused in their progress but still kept time with their feet and swinging cymbals. Then the crescent was broken; those in the center standing in lines that made a cross; those at either end grouping as stars.