These ceremonies over, the visitor was conducted to the roof, where the host awaited him. Gehazi bowed low before his master: “It is Isaac, a soldier of Damascus.”
The older man forsook his meditation and looked toward his guest. In the meanwhile, he of whom they spoke, apparently seeing nothing at all had yet seen everything. No detail of his surroundings had escaped his observant eye.
“If I like not the master better than the man,” he thought, “then shall I know that the little maid hath been indeed mistaken in putting confidence here,” and he sighed.
Noting that he was expected to approach, Isaac ran forward, prostrating himself. Rising, he reverentially took between his hands the face of the seer and kissed his head. Immediately the older man extended his hand, which the visitor clasped, and each kissed the back of the other’s hand. Isaac’s greeting was the tribute of an inferior to a revered superior. Elisha’s extended hand was a condescension which the younger man understood as placing him on the footing of an equal or that of an honored guest, yet courtesy forbade him to speak until his host had first taken the initiative.
The keen gaze of the latter seemed to penetrate his gorgeous costume and lay bare every secret of his soul, but the voice was kindly: “What is thy need, my son?”
“Thou art Elisha, prophet of Jehovah?”
“Yea, my son. What wouldst thou?”
What would he? Isaac’s voice fairly trembled with the earnestness of his desire, and he spoke rapidly: “That thou wouldst heal my master, Naaman the Syrian.”
The prophet sighed. “Neither king nor people have asked this thing at the hand of the Lord. Great love hast thou for thy master that thou comest to me.”
“Love and gratitude and admiration and pity, my lord. All these have I for my great and good master, Naaman, but I have come to thee more in dread of sorrow to a little maid whom I carried away captive almost five years ago and who hath brought to mind the teaching of my mother, who was of the Land of Gilead. Thou must know, oh my father, that among so many gods it is hard to know the one supreme save as now and again one performeth some mighty work which causeth men to say, ‘Lo here,’ or ‘Lo there,’ but my mother and this little maid have ever maintained that Jehovah is God alone, who only doeth marvelous works. If this be so, thou his prophet canst heal my master of his leprosy.”