As he reached the road, a traveller going to Bethany hailed him. "What think you that I saw just now?" asked the stranger. "A man running with all his might towards Jerusalem. Tears of joy were streaming down his cheeks, and he was shouting as he ran, 'Cleansed! Cleansed! Cleansed!' He stopped me, and bade me say, if I met a man carrying a basket and water-skin, that Simon the leper has just been healed of the leprosy. He will be home as soon as the days of purification are over."
Seth gazed at him stupidly, feeling that he must be in a dream. Esther, too, heard the message unbelievingly. Yet she walked the floor in a fever of excitement, at the bare possibility of such a thing being true.
The next morning, she sent Seth, as usual, with the provisions. But he brought them back, saying the place was still deserted.
Then she began to dare to hope; although she tried to steel herself against disappointment, by whispering over and over that she could never see him again, she waited impatiently for the days to pass. At last they had all dragged by.
The new day would begin at sunset, the very earliest time that she might expect him. The house was swept and garnished as if a king were coming. The table was set with the choicest delicacies Seth could find in the Jerusalem markets.
The earliest roses, his favorite red ones, were put in every room. In her restless excitement nothing in her wardrobe seemed rich enough to wear. She tried on one ornament after another before she was suited. Then, all in white, with jewels blazing in her ears, on her throat, on her little white hands, and her eyes shining like two glad stars, she sat down to wait for him.
But she could not keep still. This rug was turned up at the corner; that rose had dropped its petals on the floor. She would have another kind of wine on the table.
At last she stepped out of the door in her little silken-bound sandals, and climbed the outside stairs to the roof, to watch for him.
The sun was entirely out of sight, but the west was glorious with the red gold of its afterglow. Looking up the Mount of Olives, she could see the smoke of the evening sacrifice rising as the clouds of incense filled the Temple. Surely he must be far on the way by this time.