“You have come at last! At last you are here!—I thought that something had befallen you and I sent after you, but my messengers could not find you. They brought me the news, however, that you were safe and sound and that you were running about among the people, summoning them to armed resistance. I could not believe them and told them that they brought me lies. But one after another came to me with the same report and I was forced to believe it. The world became dark and dreary to me. Naughty Zerubbabel, how could you forget me at such a terrible time? How could you leave me alone in an hour of peril? Don’t you know that your Sheshana is a timorous maiden,—that her courage vanishes at the slightest danger? Oh, I am frightened to death! I am frightened to death!” Zerubbabel stood as one transfixed; his eyes shone like glowing coals, his glance was stern and angry, and his voice was piercing. “You know what I have been doing, and yet you can speak to me in this manner? Zerubbabel went forth to rouse the Jewish people to self-defence, to armed resistance, and his Sheshana dressed herself in sackcloth and ashes and succumbed to fright! Can you be Sheshana? Can you be my sweetheart? Was not your heart flooded with courage, and did it not shout with jubilation because Zerubbabel was not among the cowards and the despairers?” Sheshana continued to weep and kept repeating, “Oh, I am frightened to death! I am frightened to death!” Zerubbabel shook his head and smiled cynically. “I thought I should find a solace in you,—a balm for my grieving heart. Sheshana will understand me and will side with me, I thought, and she will give me strength. But woe to my wretchedness that is so great! Sheshana greets me with tears, with petty fears and harsh words. And she has no ears for me,—no heart....” Sheshana, however, raised her head, pursing her lips with a surly grimace. “I can have neither ears for you nor a heart. For that which you desire is folly, and you are the butt of all men’s mockery. ‘Zerubbabel is a visionary,’ they say,—a dreamer. He demands the impossible and utters dangerous things. He wishes to incite the scant Jewish people against the numberless enemy, and calls that self-defence. Why does he not preach, rather, that great and small, men and women,—all the Jewish people—shall cast itself into the rivers and streams that flow through the hundred and seven and twenty provinces? That is what they are all saying, shaking their heads at mention of you. And are they not right, and do they not speak with justice? Then how could I feel delight, and whence should joy have come to me? Because you forgot me, left me all alone and went in pursuit of dangerous dreams?”