A moment elapsed before she replied, but that moment was like one of those in which we dream, and live hours and days. She realized that there had now been forced upon her a quick decision of the question which the past hour of agonizing debate with herself had not begun to solve. She had time in that waiting moment to pray for light. She gathered up many scenes of those terrible days in the city, of her flight from Dion's help, of her vow, of her life as a spy. To these she added the imagined scenes of the coming day, the slaughter of Greeks, perhaps the annihilation of the Jewish band, and extinction of Israel's hopes. She saw all these things, and central of them all she saw the form now before her falling beneath some arrow shot from the covert of the rocks overhanging the valley he was about to enter. And then she saw herself as the accomplisher of it all. "And this, this," she said to herself, "is to be a woman's return for a man's love!" Deborah had often prayed that God would destroy her sense of personality, that she might be but an unfeeling agent of His will, as are the lightning and tempest; but He had not done so. Her human nature asserted itself over her faith; her individuality refused to lose itself in her nationality, or shall we say that her womanhood was stronger than both? This man and herself were for the instant as essential factors in her problem as were the Greek and Jewish armies. But she saw no clearer the solution of that problem; only that it must be solved, right or wrong, and at once. So she replied to her questioner: "Yes, I came from Jerusalem." The officer peered closely into her face. "You are not Greek nor Syrian." "God be praised, I am not. I am a daughter of Jerusalem, an outcast from my father's house, as you would make all the women and children of Israel to be." "Deborah! Daughter of Elkiah! Do I dream? Of all the damnable things that war has brought this is the most fiendish. You, Deborah, in a soldier's camp! Good gods! Tell me you are not the daughter of Elkiah, but some black soul from Erebus which has found her dead body and entered it." "Dion, I did not die, but it is true that another spirit has entered mine." "Better wert thou dead than live such a life as this," cried he. "Why did you fly without my help? I had arranged for your safety. I would have given my life for yours--but--but now----" He grasped her hands, then threw them from him as something that defiled him. "There is no god of Jew or Greek, or this could not have been. Tell me, Deborah, that what I see is not true. That you--that you are not here." He covered his face with his hands as if to banish the vision of the reality.