Then one by one came memory's pictures of the terrors she had experienced in Jerusalem. What had sustained her during those awful days? Her pride as the daughter of the house of Elkiah? The necessity of guarding her blind brother Caleb? Her faith? All these, doubtless; yet she confessed to herself that but for the kind words of the Greek Dion she might have given way. Not his proffered love. No! No! That alone would have made her hate him; but he had been good to her. And if—if God had used the Greek's kindness, even his love, to sustain her, to give her strength for her holy devotion, should she despise this Greek? Should she lead him into this ambuscade? If he should fall on the morrow would she not be his murderess? She recoiled from herself as from some polluted thing.
Then, as a wave receding into the sea comes back, her feeling was quickly reversed. Had she not taken delight in imagining herself another Jael, who could drive the nail through the temple of a foeman of her people, though he were sleeping in her own tent. She tried to say, "Even Dion to his death!" but the sentence would not frame itself in her purpose. Her brain seemed to stagnate. She could not think. She prayed, "Lord, I am but as a mould; fill me with such purpose as Thou wilt!"
At length she said to herself, "I will seek out Judas, and beg him to spare the advance of the Greek hosts, for there Dion will be, since his camp is here foremost."
Scarcely was this project formed when she abandoned it. The contingent from Jerusalem to which Dion belonged was as numerous as all Judas' band, and, if not destroyed in the first surprise of the attack, might turn the tide of battle. Besides, what reason could she give Judas for this request? Confess her attachment to a Greek? If womanly shame did not forbid such an acknowledgment to another man, it surely would cost her the confidence of the Jews. Never again would they believe in the patriotism or honesty of one whose brother was a traitor, and whose lover—for such they would regard Dion—was in the hostile camp.
Following her first impulses Deborah had risen from the ground and walked slowly toward the place where she knew Judas could be reached by her signals. But she quickly turned back.
"Might I not warn Dion? Not, of course, his fellow-officers. But, if I did, would not his sense of duty lead him to divulge the plot?" She prayed again for light, but no light came. The gloom deepened about her. Two spirits were tearing her soul asunder in their strife for possession. She thought of her people; of her father dashed to death by Greek hands beside the altar; then of the brave band of patriots who, unless they triumphed bloodily at the very dawn, must themselves be slaughtered before the nightfall. She felt her personality dissolving into a flame of zeal for her land and her people's God. She cried out with uplifted arms: "O God, I am no longer a woman. I am Thine; Thy Avenging Spirit! Use me as Thou dost use the lightning's bolt, the flood, the plague, that I may bring destruction to all this host!"
Then, even as she stood with outstretched arms in this awful imprecation, there came the vision of Dion, so noble, though a Greek, with a man's heart greater than all his racial prejudice; the friend who had risked life and repute for her father's safety, though it proved unavailing; the rescuer of blind Caleb; her own friend—who loved her, she could not doubt it—whose thoughts even now, as he was moving to his death, were possibly of her.
"O, God!" she exclaimed. "Take away my life. Let me die rather than make this decision."
She waited, longing that her heart might stop beating through the violence of its own contentions. But it beat on. She drew a dagger, and pressed its point gently against her bosom, as she murmured:
"Oh, if it were but right that I should lay down my life, since God will not take it!"