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It was the voice of Daniel Scheible, whose existence she had almost forgotten. "Poor Daniel!" she said, pausing and looking at him with pity. "Don't say 'Poor Daniel, but come." "Poor boy!" said Tabea. "You are bewitched!" he cried, seizing her and drawing her away. "I knew Friedsam would put a charm on you."
First of all she went to see the sinister prophetess, Sister Jael. "I've finished that turtledove, Sister Jael, and now I am going to leave the sisterhood and marry Daniel Scheible." Nothing is so surprising to a prophet as the fulfillment of his most confident prediction.
She had that day received some blank paper from the paper mill of the community, and Daniel Scheible had put this little love letter into the package of which he was the bearer.
Daniel Scheible and his little love scrawls seemed to her lofty spirit as nothing now that she saw herself in the light thrown upon her by the love of the great master whose spirit had evoked Ephrata, and whose genius uttered itself in angelic harmonies. She loathed the little life that now opened before her.
I am going to lay aside these garments and marry Daniel Scheible." She held out her hand, but Friedsam was too much stunned to see it. "You have broken your vow! You have denied the Lord!" There was no severity in his despondent rebuke; it had the vibration of an involuntary cry of surprise and pain. Tabea was not prepared for this.
With the audacity of youth he had conceived a great passion for Tabea, and now that his apprenticeship was about to expire he amused her with surreptitious notes. To-day, for the first time, Tabea began to think of the possibility of marrying Scheible, chiefly, perhaps, from a vague desire to escape from the convent, which could not but be irksome to one of her spirit.
The bell ceased, and Zion, which before had been wrapped in night, shone with light from every window, and there rose upon the silence the voices of the choruses chanting an antiphonal song; and disconsolate Scheible cursed Friedsam and Ephrata, and went off into outer darkness.
She had not signed it with her convent title, but with the initials M. T., for her proper name, Margaretha Thome. There were many fluctuations in Tabea's mind and many persuasive notes from Scheible before the nun at length promised to forsake the convent, now grown bitter to her, for the joys of a home.
Daniel Scheible, who had wandered back to the neighborhood in the aimlessness of disappointment, heard the monastery bell waking all the reverberations of the forest, and saw light after light twinkle from the little square windows of Bethany and Sharon; then he saw the monks and nuns come out of Bethany and Sharon, each carrying a small paper lantern as they hastened to Zion.
And so each one took the startling intelligence according to her character, and soon all work was suspended, and every inmate of Sharon was gathered in unwonted excitement in the halls and the common room. When Tabea passed out of the low-barred door of Sharon she met the radiant face of Scheible, who had tied his two saddle horses a little way off. "Come quickly, Tabea," he said with impatience.
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