“Yea, thou wilt always have my care. Thou wilt always command my services and my prayers. To-day I feel humble, indeed, because I lost my self-control, but I shall strive always to be worthy to be counted as one who walketh near to the prophetess of Zanah. Walda, to-day I am weak indeed. I feel how much I shall need divine strength in the years to come. My way is a lonely one. It is said that after the inspiration is vouchsafed to a prophetess her soul withdraws itself from all human companionship, and that even if it were not the custom to separate the instrument of the Lord from the colonists of Zanah, there would be naught in common between her and those who try to serve God in humbler ways. Lately, Walda, I have looked forward with a feeling that the years without thee will be weary. When thou art the prophetess there will be none with whom I can speak of the dreams I have shared with thee.”
“Thy dreams, as thou callest them, first made me feel the mysteries of life. Gerson Brandt, it was thou who didst awaken my soul; it was thou who didst turn my heart to God, and now, verily, thou wilt not be sorrowful when my day of inspiration comes?”
“To-day there is so much of self victorious in me that I know the day of the Untersuchung will make me sad. It was my intention on that day to give thee the Bible that is lost. For many months thou knowest I worked upon it, making the letters beautiful for thine eyes, and it was a solace to me to feel, every day as I turned the pages upon which I had worked with many a prayer and blessing for thy welfare, that thou wouldst take pleasure in its beauty.”
“And was that Bible for me, Gerson? On the last day when thou didst give it to me to read before the school I did covet it.”
“I did think that I should never tell thee, and it was a sore trouble when Adolph Schneider demanded that it be sold. I tell thee this because, as I have said to-day, I am weak, and I would say something in extenuation of my unseemly conduct towards the head of the thirteen elders.”
“And I am very human, for I am glad that the book is lost, and that the elders had no chance to take it from thee.”
“I could not endure the thought that the stranger from the outside world should possess what I had come to believe belonged to thee.”
Walda turned her head away a moment. Then she answered:
“I want the Bible very much indeed; but, Gerson Brandt, if any stranger were to have it, it had been better it should go to Stephen Everett than to any one else.”
A look of pain came into the school-master’s face. His eyes sought the girl’s with a glance that strove to read her heart.