"Your words give me great joy," replied she, "for during these terrible years I have had one prayer deeper than all others—it has been for you; and that I might, however humbly, cheer and sustain you as became a daughter of Israel."
"And you will continue your sweet and helpful ministry, will you not?" he asked eagerly. "In this day of our prosperity I shall need you even more than in the past. I am accustomed to war; I have become, perhaps, too self-reliant there. But I know not how to organize peace. My hands are too hard for anything but swinging the sword. Alas! as Solomon said on coming to his throne, 'I am as a little child, and know not how to go out or come in.' Deborah, promise me that you will still——"
She interrupted him with eager, almost passionate, remonstrance: "Promise you? Judas, do I need to promise you anything? Do you not know that your own heart is not truer to our cause than mine is to you? If Judas should doubt me, it would kill me. Tell me some desperate venture by which I can prove my loyalty. Test me, I beg you."
"Some desperate venture? I know of one that will test us both. It is so desperate that I hesitate to speak it to the bravest woman of all Jewry."
What sublime audacity there was in her tone as she replied: "If the champion of Israel is afraid, let him not speak it. But know that the daughter of Elkiah dares to hear and to do whatever Judas may think."
"Such words would make any coward brave," replied he. "Deborah, the Jews would make me King."
"A King! Why not? You are already the King, by right of sword, by right of your people's love, and, if Heaven's will ever had reflection from earth, by the will of our God."
"You believe in me overmuch, Deborah."
"No! no!" she responded eagerly, "but Judas has this one great weakness, that he will not believe in himself. Can you not see that Israel must have a King, and that there is but one head on which the people will allow a crown to rest?"