‘Again and again,’ she said, ‘have I besought thee to confide in me. But all in vain. To think thou shouldst have made up this riddle out of thine own head and asked it of my friends, my own people, without so much as sharing a syllable of it with me! How canst thou say thou lovest me and yet wilt not share with me this one small secret?’

But still Samson refused to tell her. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘I have not even so much as mentioned the riddle to my own father or mother! How then should I tell thee the answer however much I love thee?’

On and on she continued to pester him, taunting, beguiling, weeping, if so be by any means she could seduce him to confide in her. At last Samson could endure her wiles no longer, and on the seventh morning he told her the answer. And as he lay sleeping in the heat of the day, she sallied out softly and revealed it to the young Philistines.

That night, the last night of the feast, the young men sat in triumph, smiling craftily one at another, until at a late hour Samson reminded them that the seven days’ grace he had given them was over, and that his riddle remained unanswered. ‘Where is the forfeit you promised to bring me,’ he said, ‘every man of you a vestment of fine linen and a wedding robe? Have it again, and I defy you to answer me:

‘Out of the eater came wherewith to eat, And out of the strong the sweet.’

One and all they sat sullenly knitting their brows and gazing at him as if at a loss, then at a signal they rose and derisively sang out the answer:

‘Sweeter than honey on earth there is nought. Nor in stronger than lion can its sweetness be sought.

What sayest thou to that, Samson? Swoop back on the carcass thou hast hidden in the gorge. Maybe thou shalt find thy forfeit hidden under its skin.’

Samson’s eyes roved slowly from one face to the other as they stood in mockery around him, and at last he turned his head and gazed full into the face of the woman, who with painted cheek and brow, and head garlanded with flowers, sat beside him at the feast. She stared stonily back at him, but her hands trembled.

‘Ay,’ he said to them all, his rage and his hidden contempt of them working within him, ‘I see the way of it. Having not the wits of a man among you, you crept off and bribed the woman.’

Blazing with fury at her treachery and at the crooked and paltry fashion in which his guests had cheated him, he set off that night with a few young men of his own tribe valiant enough to go with him. And they came down before daybreak to Askelon, the chief city of the Philistines, which reared its towered walls on high above a pallid sea. There they hid themselves, and out of their ambush waylaid and slew thirty of the men of Askelon and plundered them, and brought back the clothes they wore in payment of Samson’s wager with the young Philistines.

But his anger against the woman whom he loved and who had deceived him was not abated. He refused to see her and returned to the house of his father. At this, without word to Samson, his father-in-law, the Philistine, dealt with him even more treacherously than had his guests; for he robbed him of the daughter he had given him to wife and bestowed her in marriage on one of the Philistines who had been at the wedding feast—even on the young man who was Samson’s bosom friend.

As time went by, and knowing nought of what had been done in his absence, Samson’s anger against his young wife began to wane. ‘Surely,’ he thought within himself, ‘she cheated and beguiled me not of her own will but for fear of how my enemies might revenge themselves against me.’ He pined and fretted for her company, being by nature generous and forgiving. In spite of her deceits, he still loved her. So, a little before the wheat harvest, he forgot his pride and went down again to visit her, taking