"I am quite ready," answered the girl, pressing close to the wall and lifting her face; the last gleam of gold light from the rising ridge to the west touched it, and showed it was very fair. "If you are sure it is right, if you have faith in Jehovah to lead us."
The priest's face, pale and emaciated, with the rapt look of the visionary stamped upon it, lighted up suddenly with a new exaltation.
"I am quite sure. Last night when I was praying, still in doubt, before the great crucifix, I heard a voice from above saying: 'Nicholas, you are absolved from further prayer and penance here. Go forth with the maiden you love and serve Me in the world. The joy of human hearts singing to Me in grateful praise is more pleasing to Me than these groans and tears and prayers. I have created the blue sky and the laughing seas and the green hills; go forth and see my works, and praise Me.'"
The Jewish girl had listened intently, her face as rapt as his while he spoke, the fire of joy glowing in her eyes.
"Come, then, at once," she murmured in an ardent whisper, and Nicholas stepped over the low boundary into the hill road, now wrapped in darkness. Before them still glimmered dimly the white outlines of the monastery behind the trees. The man stood motionless, gazing at them, the girl's hand tightly clasped in his and held against his breast.
"The agony, the misery I have suffered behind those walls," he muttered, "for sixteen years!"
"It is over," murmured the girl; "come away to the hills; we have no time to lose."
She stooped to gather up the objects in the road. "I have brought you these things," she said confusedly, hardly audibly. "Change into them quickly, and then follow me up the road. No, I will take all the rest," she added, as he took the bundle of clothing she gave him and stretched out his hand for the other smaller things. "Hasten, Nicholas, it is so dangerous here!" With this parting entreaty she went on up the road carrying the bundles.
After she had gone a little way she paused and listened—all was quite still—the stars now showed fitfully in the deepening purple of the sky, a little breeze blew gently up from the wilderness towards Jerusalem. The girl sat down by the wall, with her back against it, and her hands clasped round her knees. Her face had a strange, wonderful beauty as she sat waiting, white-skinned and softly-moulded, with resolute, dark eyebrows drawn straight across the calm forehead. A few moments passed, and then Nicholas approached; his flowing priest's robes were gone, the high, straight, black hat of the order was no longer on his head: it was bare, and the long uncut hair, as the Greeks wear it, was twisted in two thick fair coils round his head. Esther sprang up, untwisting a broad sash from her waist.
"Take this! No wait! let me twist it round your head—yes, so. Now it looks like a Jewish turban. You have the robe and the hat with you?—yes, bring them, bring them," and they hurried on, fleeing away from the monastery. Esther knew a short track across the hills which in a little while joins the great main road to Jericho, that descends down and down through the bare rolling hills of the wilderness to the fair plain of the Jordan and the shores of the Dead Sea. For the first few miles they sped on in silence with clasped hands, the night wind rushing against their faces, and no sound coming to their ears but the occasional whine of the hungry hyenas, prowling over the stony, starlit hills. In the man's breast swelled an exaltation beyond all words: it lifted him up so, that his feet seemed flying over the rugged ground without touching it; the night-wind filled his veins with fire: his brain seemed alight and glowing. For years past the bare stone walls of his monk's cell had given him pictures painted by his fevered fancy of such a walk as this through starlit, open spaces—a walk to life and freedom. For years his hot, caged feet had paced the stone cell floor, aching to pass the threshold; and for the last month ever since from amongst the olive-trees he had seen the fair Jewish girl pass by, a new vision had come upon those white-washed walls to add its torture to the rest. Evening after evening he had stolen out at sunset to see her pass, as she came and went from the little cluster of Jewish houses on the ridge beyond the monastery and watched the sunlight play upon her brows and hair. Could this thing, so divinely beautiful, be the creation of the devil to destroy men's souls? His reason revolted against it. If so, the warm sunlight and radiant sky and air, the flowers and the purple hills, his weary eyes strained out to must be also the devil's work, for all these things were akin, and the woman passing amongst them was but the masterpiece made by the same hand.