While she sat there peopling the dusky solitude with thoughts even more cheerless, suddenly a woman came up the hill staggering and spent with exertion.
The widow arose hastily, and covering her head, cried, in a voice unnaturally harsh, “Unclean, unclean!”
In a moment, heedless of the notice, Amrah was at her feet. All the long-pent love of the simple creature burst forth: with tears and passionate exclamations she kissed her mistress’s garments, and for a while the latter strove to escape from her; then, seeing she could not, she waited till the violence of the paroxysm was over.
“What have you done, Amrah?” she said. “Is it by such disobedience you prove your love for us? Wicked woman! You are lost; and he—your master—you can never, never go back to him.”
Amrah grovelled sobbing in the dust.
“The ban of the Law is upon you, too; you cannot return to Jerusalem. What will become of us? Who will bring us bread? O wicked, wicked Amrah! We are all, all undone alike!”
“Mercy, mercy!” Amrah answered from the ground.
“You should have been merciful to yourself, and by so doing been most merciful to us. Now where can we fly? There is no one to help us. O false servant! The wrath of the Lord was already too heavy upon us.”
Here Tirzah, awakened by the noise, appeared at the door of the tomb. The pen shrinks from the picture she presented. In the half-clad apparition, patched with scales, lividly seamed, nearly blind, its limbs and extremities swollen to grotesque largeness, familiar eyes however sharpened by love could not have recognized the creature of childish grace and purity we first beheld her.
“Is it Amrah, mother?”