"And you, Captain?" said Deborah, with as much coolness as courtesy when they were alone. "You will pardon my seeming lack of hospitality, for you know that you are ever welcome at the house of Elkiah; but should you not return to your duty? The riot in the street needs a strong control. And are you not under orders from General Seron?"
"The General has forgotten what orders he has given," replied Dion. "Or, if he remembers them, he will have to enforce them with a new army from Sheol, for Seron has fled thither. It was bravely done, but terrible. The General has already taken the only vengeance that remained for his defeat. He has washed out his dishonor in his own blood. We had scarcely entered the citadel when he turned to me and said, 'Dion, this disgrace I shall never live to hear told. Do as I do.' With that he struck his dagger to the heart of his wife, then fell himself upon his sword point. I did not obey his order. I was too cowardly for that."
Dion hesitated before he continued:
"But no, I was not cowardly. Deborah, since what has passed between us, I owe to you the confession of my only reason for not following my leader in his terrible deed. I thought of one very dear to me, from whom I seemed to have been separated by long years, so slow did the time creep in her absence—now among a people foreign to me. To this woman I had once bound myself with a vow."
Deborah felt the blood coming to her cheeks.
Dion kept on: "While this woman lives, I must live, unless she bids me die. But if she shall call me coward I will disprove her words by dying at her feet. Does the daughter of Elkiah bid me follow my General? I will obey. Since the turn of affairs at Bethhoron you will no longer need one of hated race to protect you. As your Jehovah is my judge, Deborah, I have lived for naught else since I felt the touch of your hand at the Wady. I await your word."
How much one can live in a moment! The two preceding years lay there in Deborah's memory like a landscape under the lightning. She saw this man in his sacrificial friendship. She thought that she resented his personal affection; but, that being eliminated, he was the noblest of souls: a Greek, yet respecting her nation's faith even by the altar in the Temple where he raised his protest in the endeavor to protect her dying father; defending this house because it was a home; more tender to her Caleb than his own brother had been. She asked herself, "Could even Judas have shown nobler manhood? Would he befriend a household of his enemies whose only claim should be their piteous need?"
With all hauteur gone, she extended her hand and said:
"Forgive me, Captain Dion! I have wronged you. I have been blind! I am blind still!"