Better be smitten here, where thou canst get help
from thine own country, if need be, than yonder, where they but wait to
spoil thy work and kill thee. Thou art young; wilt thou throw thy life
away? Art thou not needed here as there? For me it is nothing, whether it
be now or in a few benumbing years; but for thee--is there no one whom
thou lovest so well that thou wouldst not shelter thy life to spare that
life sorrow? Is there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee
to mortal sorrow, if thou goest without care to thy end too soon?"
As a warm wind suddenly sweeps across the cool air of a summer evening
for an instant, suffocating and unnerving, so Ebn Ezra's last words swept
across David's spirit. His breath came quicker, his eyes half closed. "Is
there none that thou lovest so, and that will love thee to mortal sorrow,
if--"
As a hand secretly and swiftly slips the lever that opens the
sluice-gates of a dike, while the watchman turns away for a moment to
look at the fields which the waters enrich and the homes of poor folk
whom the gates defend, so, in a moment, when off his guard, worn with
watching and fending, as it were, Ebn Ezra had sprung the lever, and a
flood of feeling swept over David, drowned him in its impulse and pent-up
force.
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