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"You suggested this course to them, I suppose?" he said after a pause. "No, Brother Friedsam, I had nothing to do with it until now. But I think they are right, and I hope they will keep to their word. You have been altogether too hard on us." The director made no reply, but wearily leaned his pale, refined face upon his hand and looked up at Tabea.
The valley of Tabea is a pleasant place, having herbage for the camels in abundance, as is the case wherever the ethel-tree is found. There are several wells with water near the surface, and others might no doubt be dug all over the wady. Our encampment looked picturesque this evening. It is the eve of Ramadhan, and our people fired shots here and there to celebrate the occasion. 10th.
Nevertheless she held up her head like a defiant Hofcavalier. After a time Brother Jabez, with a kind greeting, passed her, and the director, looking up, said very gently: "I wish you a very good day, Sister Tabea." "I am no longer Sister Tabea, but Margaretha Thome. I have said adieu to all in Sharon, and now I come to say good-by to Brother Friedsam.
Tabea felt sure that Friedsam had called the meeting at this moment by way of assuring her of his remembrance.
About three hours before we reached the well of Tabea we crossed the real boundaries of the Fezzanee territory, although the Tuaricks seem to claim the pass on the mountains as their own. The weather was hot, there being no wind. On these occasions the afternoons are very oppressive, and the sun causes his power to be unpleasantly felt until an hour before sunset.
Dimly she saw the sisters standing without the door of Sharon; there was Thecla, with half-amused face, and there was Persida, curious as ever; there were Sister Petronella and Sister Blandina and others, and behind all the straight, tall form of austere Jael. Without turning to the right or to the left, Tabea directed her steps to the group at the door of Sharon. "No! no! come, dear Tabea!"
There was a tone of beseeching in these last words which Tabea had not been wont to use. The director looked more numb now than ever. Tabea's words had given him a rude blow, and he could not at once recover. His lips moved without speaking, and his face assumed a look betokening inward suffering. "Great God of wisdom, must I then tell her?" said Friedsam when he got breath.
Daniel held to the Pennsylvania Dutch superstitions, but Tabea only laughed, and said, "I am not afraid of wizards." She looked the Hofcavalier more than ever as she left the trembling fellow and went up to the door of Brother Friedsam's lodge. "She isn't afraid of the devil," muttered Scheible. Tabea knocked at the door. "Come in and welcome, whoever thou art," said the director within.
He stood up and gazed out of the square window in indecision. "Tabea," he said presently, turning full upon her and looking into her now pale face upturned to the light, "I thought my secret would die in my breast, but you wring it from me. You say that I have no infirmities no desire for companionship like other men or women.
Jael looked all aghast, and her face splintered into the most contradictory lines in the effort to give expression to the most conflicting emotions. "I'm astonished at you," she said reprovingly, when she got breath. "Why, I thought you expected it," replied Tabea. "Will you break your vow?" "Yes. Why shouldn't a woman break a vow made by a girl? And so, good-by, Sister Jael.
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