“Don’t try to remember them,” he said cheerfully. “There is so much in life that it is better to forget. Yes, this is Tyre, sure enough. You could not recognise it last night because it was too dark, and this garden, I am told, did belong to Benoni. Who it belongs to now I do not know. To you, I suppose, and through you to Cæsar.”
Now while he spoke thus somewhat at random, for he was watching her all the while, Miriam kept her eyes fixed upon his face, as though she searched there for something which she could but half recall. Suddenly an inspiration entered into them and she said:
“Now I have it! You are the Roman captain, Gallus, who brought me the letter from——” and she paused, thrusting her hand into the bosom of her robe, then went on with something like a sob: “Oh! it is gone. How did it go? Let me think.”
“Don’t think,” said Gallus; “there are so many things in the world which it is better not to think about. Yes, as it happens, I am that man, and some years ago I did bring you the letter from Marcus, called The Fortunate. Also, as it chanced, I never forgot your sweet face and knew it again at a time when it was well that you should find a friend. No, we won’t talk about it now. Look, the old slave calls you. It is time that you should break your fast, and I also must eat and have my wound dressed. Afterwards we will talk.”
All that morning Miriam saw nothing more of Gallus. Indeed, he did not mean that she should, since he was sure that her new-found sense ought not to be overstrained at first, lest it should break down again, never to recover. So she went out and sat alone by the garden beach, for the soldiers had orders to respect her privacy, and gazed at the sea.
As she sat thus in quiet, event by event the terrible past came back to her. She remembered it all now—their flight from Tyre; the march into Jerusalem; the sojourn in the dark with the Essenes; the Old Tower and what befell there; the escape of Marcus; her trial before the Sanhedrim; the execution of her sentence upon the gateway; and then that fearful night when the flames of the burning Temple scorched to her very brain, and the sights and sounds of slaughter withered her heart. After this she could recall but one more thing—the vision of the majestic figure of Benoni standing against a background of black smoke upon the lofty cloister-roof and defying the Romans before he plunged headlong in the flames beneath. Of her rescue on the roof of the Gate Nicanor, of her being carried before Titus Cæsar in the arms of Gallus, and of his judgment concerning her she recollected nothing. Nor, indeed, did she ever attain to a clear memory of those events, while the time between them and the recovery of her reason by the seashore in the garden at Tyre always remained a blank. That troubled fragment of her life was sunk in a black sea of oblivion.
At length the old woman came to summon Miriam to her midday meal, and led her, not to her own tent, but to that which was pitched to serve as an eating-place for the captain, Gallus. As she went she saw knots of soldiers gathered across her path as though to intercept her, and turned to fly, for the sight of them brought back the terrors of the siege.
“Have no fear of them,” said the old woman, smiling. “Ill would it go here with him who dared to lift a finger against their Pearl-Maiden.”
“Pearl-Maiden! Why?” asked Miriam.
“That is what they call you, because of the necklace that was upon your breast when you were captured, which you wear still. As for why—well, I suppose because they love you, the poor sick thing they nursed. They have heard that you are better and gather to give you joy of it; that is all.”