“Unless it had been stolen from thee, small chance hast thou had to lose it. Nay, but thou dost deceive me. Speak without fear. What hast thou done with the jewel?”
She hesitated. “I lost it,” she reiterated.
Storm clouds gathered on his face and the tempest broke in fury upon her: “Thinkest thou to deal doubly with me and yet find confidence and affection? Nay, but truth will I have from thee, else this home is no longer thine. Speak! What hast thou done with the pearl?”
Judith meditated. To confess while he was in that mood was to find neither understanding nor approval. She would wait until his heart was more tender toward her.
“I have lost it,” she repeated, sullenly, and cowered as he came toward her.
Laying a rough hand on her shoulder he pointed to the door: “Go thou and enter not again until truth be thy companion.”
Shaking off his hand she faced him. Not a word did she utter, but the look he never forgot. In a moment she had passed out of the door into the sun-kissed air, divorced by the one word which an Oriental husband may speak at any time to the wife of whom he has tired, and which even a Jew occasionally spoke in defiance of Mosaic law.
At the top of the hill which crowned the Valley of Jiptha-el, a woman bent and worn sat patiently on the coarse green grass under the shade of a wild fig tree. As Judith appeared she addressed her without salutation and without taking her eyes from the path.
“Day after day, from sunrise to sunset, have I stayed here, waiting for Eli to bring them back to me. Yet if they were coming, would they not have been here a month ago? Early were the rains over and long hath travelers been passing the mouth of the valley, but they for whom I wait come not.”