Your story has reached the present time, yet you have made no mention of the days following my mother's death, during which you were our guest in Tanis.

Have you forgotten what first your eyes and then your lips confessed?
Have the day of your departure and the evening on the sea, when you bade me hope for and remember you, quite vanished from your memory?
Did the hatred Moses implanted in your heart kill love as well as every other feeling ?" "Love ?" asked Miriam, raising her large eyes mournfully to his.

"Oh no.
How could I forget that time, the happiest of my life! Yet from the day Moses returned from the wilderness by God's command to release the people from bondage--three months after my separation from you--I have taken no note of years and months, days and nights." "Then you have forgotten those also ?" Hosea asked harshly.
"Not so," Miriam answered, gazing beseechingly into his face.

"The love that grew up in the child and did not wither in the maiden's heart, cannot be killed; but whoever consecrates one's life to the Lord...." Here she suddenly paused, raised her hands and eyes rapturously, as if borne out of herself, and cried imploringly: "Thou art near me, Omnipotent One, and seest my heart! Thou knowest why Miriam took no note of days and years, and asked nothing save to be Thy instrument until her people, who are, also, this man's people, received what Thou didst promise." During this appeal, which rose from the inmost depths of the maiden's heart, the light wind which precedes the coming of dawn had risen, and the foliage in the thick crown of the sycamore above Miriam's head rustled; but Hosea fairly devoured with his eyes the tall majestic figure, half illumined, half veiled by the faint glimmering light.

What he heard and saw seemed like a miracle.