She undid their arms and ran back toward the quarries. For a moment the children hesitated and then they pursued her, crying in an undertone as they ran. Past the stone-pits, up the winding valley she fled until she reached the encampment and her own tent.
The women saw her come and old Deborah, who was preparing vegetables for the noonday meal, left the fires and hastened to the shelter. There, Rachel, choking with terror and tears, gave the story of the morning.
Deborah made no interruption and after the disjointed and unhappy recital was complete, she sat for some moments, motionless and silent. Then she arose and made as if to leave the tent, but Rachel caught at her hand in affright.
"Nay, be not so frightened," the old woman said soothingly. "I go to look for Atsu. He will come in a little while."
With that, she went forth. After a time—more than two hours, in truth, but infinitely longer to Rachel, the voice of the taskmaster was heard without, talking with Deborah. He was permitting no curb to the expression of his rage.
"The gods rend his heart to ribbons!" he panted after a tempest of anathema. "Curse the insatiate brute! Is there not enough of Egypt's women who are willingly loose that he must destroy the purest spirit on earth? He shall not have her, if I take his life to save her!"
After a moment's savage rumination, he broke out again.
"He has us on the hip! We shall be put to it to hide her away from him now. Do thou go to her—nay, I will go."
Rachel heard him enter the tent and walk across the matting on the floor. She flung her arm over her face and huddled closer to the linen-covered heap of straw against which she had thrown herself. Even the eyes of the taskmaster were intolerable, in her shame. Atsu plunged into the heart of his subject at once.
"There is no escape in the choosing of the tens, now, Rachel. I have said that I would not vex thee again with my love. Once I offered thee marriage as refuge. My love and the shelter of my name are thine to take or leave. I will urge thee no more."