"You are a woman, and yet practise the art of the leech."
"My God has commanded me to care for the suffering ones of our people," replied the other.
The dying girl's eyes began to glitter with a restless light, and she gasped in louder tones, nay with a firmness that surprised the others:
"You are Miriam, the woman who sent for Hosea." And when the other answered promptly and proudly: "It is as you say!" Kasana continued:
"And you possess striking, imperious beauty, and much influence. He obeyed your summons, and you—you consented to wed another?"
Again the prophetess answered, this time with gloomy earnestness: "It is as you say."
The dying girl closed her eyes once more, and a strange proud smile hovered around her lips. But it soon vanished and a great and painful restlessness seized upon her. The fingers of her little hands, her lips, nay, even her eyelids moved perpetually, and her smooth, narrow forehead contracted as if some great thought occupied her mind.
At last the ideas that troubled her found utterance and, as if roused from her repose, she exclaimed in terrified accents:
"You are Ephraim, who seemed like his son, and the old man is Nun, his dear father. There you stand and will live on. . . . But I—I . . . Oh, it is so hard to leave the light. . . . Anubis will lead me before the judgment seat of Osiris. My heart will be weighed, and then. . . ."
Here she shuddered and opened and closed her trembling hands; but she soon regained her composure and began to speak again. Miriam, however, sternly forbade this, because it would hasten her death.