He smiled unpleasantly, quite misunderstanding the reason for her hesitancy. “Because it is Sarah, who hath shared her home with thee? Because she is old before her time and sick? Because thou thinkest I offer her too little? Five years ago thou wert ready to leave her roof for mine. Hath she treated thee better than I?”
Again Judith’s eyes spoke, this time with a flash of indignation. “Never hath she treated me well. Grudgingly always did she offer me a home. Daughter that I have been to her for the past five years since Miriam was taken away, never doth she look at me but always through me. My services are acceptable but not myself. Never doth she let me forget that I am of strange people. It was Caleb, husband of Sarah and brother to my father, who was ever my friend.” Her voice broke, but in a moment she went on more steadily: “What I do for her is in memory of him and of the little maid who loved me.”
“I see,” he declared, his eyebrows drawn together until they made one line: “So it is because I refused help to that visionary, Eli, who desired a gift toward the maid’s ransom, that thou dost revenge thyself upon me by withholding the pearl. As if he would find trace of her! As if he would want to find what he would find! Thinkest thou a little maid would be safe in the midst of a rough soldiery? Thinkest thou the cruel Syrians would deal gently with a child? Nay, but when Eli returneth with a tale too pitiful to tell a sorrowing mother—”
Judith interrupted, her words coming chokingly: “When Eli failed to secure thy help, I besought thine aid for Miriam, adding my tears to his, thinking thou wouldst understand and sympathize, thou, a sorrowing father, who had himself lost a little maid, a maid so tiny and so sweet, stolen by Death, not by the Syrians—”
She turned her head and a sob escaped her. There was absolute silence in the apartment. Abner cleared his throat.
“Thou dost evade the question. Come, acknowledge the truth. Thou dost revenge thyself upon me by withholding the pearl.”
“Nay,” returned Judith, “I would scorn to avenge myself upon thee. I—I—have lost the pearl.”
He looked at her in amazement.
“And I feared to tell thee lest thou be angry,” she added, not looking at him.
He strode across the room and took her face between his hands, striving to read her expression. Something he saw there dictated his next words: