Page 167 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

Canaan, so my friends and I were brought back to give the witness of Jehovah in this
land from whence our ancestor was called out. And He has given us fruit among the
kings, among the Magi and among the people. And you, Queen Rhea, by your

tenderness of heart to obey God, your faithfulness in prayer, and your loving-kindness
to the poor, have been perhaps the choicest of fruit unto our God, the only True God!”
Thus spake Daniel.

Tears of joy and love flowed from the eyes of Rhea, now dimmed with age, and
down her furrowed cheeks. Here was a true Platonic friendship. Since the death of her
husband, Rhea had loved this nobleman as only a woman can love a man. She had
loved him even more than she had loved her husband who had grieved her so often,

and was (except at the end of his life) so proud, so capricious, so unpredictable.

And Daniel, the man of God, the bachelor-statesman whose life had been barren of
romance leading to marriage, had known after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, that he

loved this woman as only a good man can love a good woman—a love begotten of
deep spiritual affinity. Marriage was never mentioned between them or seriously
thought of, since widowed queens never married again. But for three decades each had
loved the other with a devotion that excluded any other living person. And now was

the time of a brief good-bye as each stood on the brink of departure to a land where
one never grows old.

The age prophet stood to his feet to go, and looked down into her eyes. He gazed

for a moment and then bent down and kissed her upturned lips. In this kiss was
gathered up the love of thirty years—the only expression of its kind that this peerless
man had ever known, the crowning experience of a life-time.

For this fleeting moment she was not Nebuchadnezzar’s widow, but his Rhea.
“Farewell, Rhea, we shall meet soon—there!”
“It is true! We shall meet—there! And to you, beloved one, farewell.” With a last
press of the hands, the aged lovers were parted. No human eye beheld the parting kiss.

Through the outer room and the door opened for him by a servant, the prophet-
statesman passed for the last time, conscious of a lightness in his step that he had not
known when he entered!

He left the palace and made his way with deliberate steps back to his great house
followed all the way by the palace guards.