“I am glad to have met you, Walda,” he said, with a little hesitation as he spoke her name, “for I am thinking of going away this week—”
“Nay, tell me not that, Stephen Everett,” she answered. “Truly, thou dost not mean thou wilt leave Zanah before the _Untersuchung_?”
“Surely, you do not care whether I go or stay?” he said.
The prophetess of Zanah knew no arts of coquetry. She did not understand the significance of his words, and she looked into his face with clear, untroubled eyes.
“Ah, but I do care,” she exclaimed. “My father needs thee yet; he is not so strong to-day.”
She turned away from the well and began to walk towards the bridge. Everett followed her.
“Your father will get on without me,” he declared, with some coldness, for the girl’s unconscious rebuff irritated him.
“Nay, thou seemest to hold the power which keepeth him alive. I mean, that although it is the Lord that hath vouchsafed to spare him, thou art his instrument. My faith is not steadfast. I am weak, indeed; but thou hast seemed to me a stay, a strong staff upon which I lean.”
“It is good to know that you count me even a little help.” An intonation in his voice told her that he felt himself aggrieved.
“Thou must count me a selfish woman of Zanah,” she made haste to say. “Thou hast stayed many days here in the colony, and neglected thine own work that thou mightst minister to my father.”
“Thou hast my gratitude, Stephen.” She paused on the bridge. “I cannot estimate what sacrifice thou hast made to keep thy word, but thou hast caused me to know that all who belong to the great world are not wicked. Verily, Stephen, thou dost serve the Lord.”
Everett did not reply immediately. He had a guilty sense of misleading the prophetess of Zanah. He knew that of all his life but the smallest fragments had been given to service of any sort. A sense of regret for the futile years he had spent made him turn away, for the girl was looking at him with a searching gaze that made him uncomfortable.
“The darkness is falling; I must hasten on,” said Walda, but she did not move.
“Where were you going?” asked Everett. “Let me walk with you?”
“It is not the custom for the men of Zanah to talk with the women, or to walk with them,” said Walda. “It hath been decreed by the elders that I shall go alone at this hour every night to pray at the grave of Marta Bachmann.”
