Homo Sum | Page 5

circles as if they had wings?"
"The wings of Satan," Hermas interrupted sternly. "You are a demon, a
hardened heathen."
"So says our pious Paulus," laughed the girl.
"So say I too," cried the young man. "Who ever saw you in the
assemblies of the just? Do you pray? Do you ever praise the Lord and
our Saviour?"

"And what should I praise them for?" asked Miriam. "Because I am
regarded as a foul fiend by the most pious among you perhaps?"
"But it is because you are a sinner that Heaven denies you its blessing."
"No--no, a thousand times no!" cried Miriam. "No god has ever
troubled himself about me. And if I am not good, why should I be when
nothing but evil ever has fallen to my share? Do you know who I am
and how I became so? I was wicked, perhaps, when both my parents
were slain in their pilgrimage hither? Why, I was then no more than six
years old, and what is a child of that age? But still I very well
remember that there were many camels grazing near our house, and
horses too that belonged to us, and that on a hand that often caressed
me--it was my mother's hand--a large jewel shone. I had a black slave
too that obeyed me; when she and I did not agree I used to hang on to
her grey woolly hair and beat her. Who knows what may have become
of her? I did not love her, but if I had her now, how kind I would be to
her. And now for twelve years I myself have eaten the bread of
servitude, and have kept Senator Petrus's goats, and if I ventured to
show myself at a festival among the free maidens, they would turn me
out and pull the wreath out of my hair. And am I to be thankful? What
for, I wonder? And pious? What god has taken any care of me? Call me
an evil demon--call me so! But if Petrus and your Paulus there say that
He who is up above us and who let me grow up to such a lot is good,
they tell a lie. God is cruel, and it is just like Him to put it into your
heart to throw stones and scare me away from your well."
With these words she burst out into bitter sobs, and her features worked
with various and passionate distortion.
Hermas felt compassion for the weeping Miriam. He had met her a
hundred times and she had shown herself now haughty, now
discontented, now exacting and now wrathful, but never before soft or
sad. To-day, for the first time, she had opened her heart to him; the
tears which disfigured her countenance gave her character a value
which it had never before had in his eyes, and when he saw her weak
and unhappy he felt ashamed of his hardness. He went up to her kindly
and said: "You need not cry; come to the well again always, I will not

prevent you."
His deep voice sounded soft and kind as he spoke, but she sobbed more
passionately than before, almost convulsively, and she tried to speak
but she could not. Trembling in every slender limb, shaken with grief,
and overwhelmed with sorrow, the slight shepherdess stood before him,
and he felt as if he must help her. His passionate pity cut him to the
heart and fettered his by no means ready tongue.
As he could find no word of comfort, he took the water-gourd in his
left hand and laid his right, in which he had hitherto held it, gently on
her shoulder. She started, but she let him do it; he felt her warm breath;
he would have drawn back, but he felt as if he could not; he hardly
knew whether she was crying or laughing while she let his hand rest on
her black waving hair.
She did not move. At last she raised her head, her eyes flashed into his,
and at the same instant he felt two slender arms clasped round his neck.
He felt as if a sea were roaring in his ears, and fire blazing in his eyes.
A nameless anguish seized him; he tore himself violently free, and with
a loud cry as if all the spirits of hell were after him he fled up the steps
that led from the well, and heeded not that his water-jar was shattered
into a thousand pieces against the rocky wall.
She stood looking after him as if spell-bound. Then she struck her
slender hand against her forehead, threw herself down by the spring
again and stared into space; there she lay motionless, only her mouth
continued to twitch.
When the