But Ben David's tomb was the first I found, carved with the intersecting triangles. The date showed he had died very soon after my departure; perhaps, I thought remorsefully, my importunities had agitated him too much. Ah! there at last was Yarchi. Under a high white stone he slept as soundly as any straight corpse. His sneering mouth had crumbled to dust, but I would have given much to hear it once more abuse the _Chassidim_. Propped on my stick and poring over the faded gilt letters, I recalled "the handsome stranger" whom the years had marred. But of Bethulah I saw no sign. I wandered back and found the turreted house, but it had been converted into a large store, and from Bethulah's turret window hung a great advertising sky-sign. I returned cheerlessly to the hotel, but as the sun began to pierce auspiciously through the bleakness of early March, I was about to sally forth again in the direction of Yarchi's ancient cottage, when the porter directed me--as if I were a mere tourist--to go to see the giant cedar of Lebanon with its Titanic arrow. However, I followed his instructions, and pretty soon I espied the broad-girthed tree towering over its field, with the foreign transpiercing trunk about fifteen feet from the ground, making indeed a vast cross. Leaning against the sunlit cedar was a white-robed figure, and as I hobbled nearer I saw by the shroud and the crown of flowers that I had found Bethulah. At my approach she drew herself up in statuesque dignity, upright as Ben David of yore, and looked at me with keen unclouded eyes. There was a wondrous beauty of old age in her face and bearing. The silver hair banded on the temples glistened picturesquely against the reds and greens and golds of her crown. "Ah, stranger!" she said, with a gracious smile. "You return to us." "You recognize me?" I mumbled, in amaze. "It is the face I loved in youth," she said simply. Strange, happy, wistful tears sprang to my old eyes--some blurred sense of youth and love and God. "Your youth seems with you still," I said. "Your face is as sweet, your voice as full of music." The old ecstatic look lit up her eyes. "It is God who keeps me ever young, till the great day dawns." I was taken aback. What! She believed still! That alternative had not figured in my prevision of pathetic closes. I was silent, but the old tumult of thought raged within me. "But is not the day passed forever?" I murmured at last. The light in her eyes became queenly fire. "While there is life," she cried, "in the veins of the house of Ben David!" And as she spoke my eye caught the gleam of the Persian emerald on her forefinger. "And your worshippers--what of them?" I asked.