I
Beneath her balcony, in the delicate spring night, the life of Gaza
flowed gently as a calm river. Eastward the green hills of Canaan
were, Delilah knew, and in imagination she could see the soft blue down
of the budding corn, the clouds of flowers, the piping green of the
vines, the darkness of the olive-trees. And in the west a little moon
was, while as yet the sun had not gone down, a little blade of silver,
like one sweet note on a flute. It made one wish to be young again, to
be a child....
The lamps of Gaza were not lighted. None was eager to go within, and
below there was still the jingle of camel bells, the padding of
donkeys, the nervous clatter of some horse's hoofs as a desert rider
sought to guide his mount in the filled streets. Languid, supercilious
Egyptians strolled in the provincial ways; desert men, their eyes
suspicious as hawk's, moved warily hither and thither; her own
countrymen, the squat, cheerful Philistines, half townsman and half
mariner, walked briskly; mysterious, aloof Phoenicians; an occasional
strange seaman from Gaul, come eastward with his ship for a cargo from
Asia Minor; and now came the "Hough-hough! Hough-hough!" of herdsmen,
and dappled kine went by, belabored with sticks, and as she looked,
Delilah saw the group of Israelites who owned them.
From the street they saw her, and their eyes blazed fury. They pointed
her out to one another, with quick, wide gestures, and she could hear
the gutturals of their denunciation.... Oh, yes, they remembered
Samson, after twenty years! Remembered him almost as well as she!