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golden four-branched candlesticks were erected and lighted up in the Women’s Court at the Temple, and the priests and Levites danced a torch-dance around them, with trumpet music and rhythmic shaking of the thyrsi to each of the four quarters of Heaven in turn, and aloft to the zenith. These gestures had once been made in honour of Anatha, marking out the five points of her pyramid of power ; but now Jehovah claimed all the honour.
    Towards evening Judith said to Hannah : “Mistress, let us go to the Women’s Court and afterwards join the merry-makers in the streets.”
    “Wc will go to the Court, but afterwards we will return to this house. Since my husband has ridden off, I do not know where, it would be unseemly for me to go about the streets with you and seem to rejoice.”
    “Eve’s moon shines only once a year. Here are the clothes fitting for the occasion which you asked me to select from your cedar-wood coffer.”
    Hannah recognized the bridal dress which she had worn ten years before at her wedding. She looked steadily into Judith’s eyes and asked : “What is this folly, daughter ?”
    Judith blushed. “We are commanded to rejoice to-night and to put on our richest clothes. These are your richest clothes, Mistress, and what woman rejoices more than one who wears her bridal dress ?”
    Hannah gently fingered the many-coloured embroidery and said after a long silence, but in the voice of one who wishes to be persuaded : “How can I go dressed as a bride, daughter, when I have been married for ten years ?”
    “If you wear your bridal dress nobody will know you for the wife of my lord Joachim ; and you may rejoice in the streets to your heart’s content.”
    “But the headband is missing. The moths fretted away the wool and I put it aside to mend.”
    “Here is a better headband, Mistress, than the one in which you were married. It is a gift from your bond-maid Judith, who loves you.”
    Hannah looked at the purple headband, braided with pearls and embroidered with gold and scarlet thread. She asked severely : “From whom is this beautiful thing stolen ?”
    “It is stolen from nobody. Before I came to you I was under bond to my lord’s kinswoman Jemima, who inherited jewels and clothes from her stepmother. When I left her, she praised me for my dutifulness and gave me the headband. She said : ‘Since you are now to serve in the house of Joachim of Cocheba, who is of the Heirs of David, this headband may win your mistress’s favour or soften her heart if you displease her. I am not of royal blood and neither are you ; we may not wear it.’ ”
    Hannah’s tears flowed afresh. She was sorely tempted to wear the dress and the headband ; but dared not.
    Judith asked : “How long will you continue to humble your heart, Mistress ?”
    “So long as my double grief continues. Is it a little thing to be childless? Is it a little thing to be suddenly forsaken by a noble husband ?”
    Judith laughed gaily. “Wash your face, paint your eyes with green copper paint from Sinai, rub spikenard between your breasts. Wear this royal headband and the bridal dress and come out with me quickly while the household is busily feasting in the arbour.”
    “Begone from my presence,” Hannah cried angrily. “I have never sinned against my husband all these years and it would be folly to begin now. Someone has lent you this headband in the hope that it will lure me out merry-making to my shame ; it is some bold lover of your own who wishes me to become an accomplice in your wantonness.”
    “The headband was given me by a devout woman, as I call the Lord to witness! Are you inviting me to answer your anger with curses? I should do so indeed if I thought that any curse of mine would sting you into wisdom. But it would be presumptuous in me to say more when the Lord himself has cursed you by shutting up your womb and making you the butt of your fertile sisters.” With that she ran away.
    Hannah took up the purple