to say that the little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark.

And sometimes she would look at the pretty shell of its ear,
and the ear was round and full as a shell on the shore,

and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it,
and that all within was silence.

So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
"It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face

and see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
will yet speak to me, and make me very glad." And then

an ineffable serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.
But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar

with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at
its little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about

in a peacefulperplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child
did not open in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time

was ripe that a child's ears should hear from hour to hour
the sweet babble of a mother's love, and its tongue begin to give back

the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth's child heard nothing,
and its tongue was mute.

Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed
to come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say,

"Wait, Ruth; only wait, only a little longer."
So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again,

and watched for its smile that should answer to her smile,
and listened for the prattle of its little lips. But never a sound

as of speech seemed to break the silence between the words that trembled
from her own tongue, and never once across her baby's face passed

the light of her tearful smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her
wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the pains she was at

to conceal them. Thus, every day at midday she would carry
her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink

in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then,
she would drop her head and say, "How sweet the air is to-day,

and how pleasant to sit in the sun!"
"So it is," he would answer, "so it is."

Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew
in the court, she would catch up her child and carry it close,

and watch if its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her,
she would laugh--a little shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face

in confusion.
"How merry you are, sweetheart," he would say, and then pass

into the house.
For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,

and pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled
at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer,

for his very soul had sickened, and he cried, "Have done,
Ruth!--for mercy's sake, have done! The child is a soul in chains,

and a spirit in prison. Her eyes are darkness, like the tomb's,
and her ears are silence, like the grave's. Never will she smile

to her mother's smile, or answer to her father's speech.
The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the first face

she will see will be the face of God."
At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.

The hope that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her
no longer. The fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew

a long breath, and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.
The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi,

as they had agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew
of herself, and a mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age

she was a creature of the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her
Jewish parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn.

And if her eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul;
and if her ears were silence, there was music within her heart.

She was brighter than the sun which she could not see, and sweeter
than the songs which she could not hear. She was joyous as a bird

in its narrow cage, and never did she fret at the bars which bound her.
And, like the bird that sings at midnight, her cheery soul sang

in its darkness.
Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was

the sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night,
and rose again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair,

and laughed again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was

the sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day
from the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark.

She knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father
by the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew

in the fields outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them
in her lap, as other children did, and bring them home with her

in her hands. She seemed almost to know their colours also,
for the flowers which she would twine in her hair were red,

and the white were those which she would lay on her bosom.
And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone

could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling

to them that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child,
and she knew no delight like to that of playing with other children.

But her father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour
in Tetuan was allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children

whom she met in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand,
no child did she ever meet.

Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious
of the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel.

She herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but
her little Naomi was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child

that is the only child of her parents; again, alone as a child
whose parents are cut off from the parents of other children;

and yet again, once more, alone as a child that is blind and dumb.
But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him

from the Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and
big innocent white eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel.

The boy's name was Ali, and he was four years old. His father had
killed his mother for infidelity and neglect of their child, and,

having no one to buy him out of prison, he had that day been executed.
Then little Ali had been left alone in the world, and so Israel

had taken him.
Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan,

but secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter
no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes

could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together,
they played together, they slept together, and the little black head

of the boy lay with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles

of humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them.
First, on Ali's part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi,

"Come!" she did not hear, when he asked "Why?" she did not answer;
and when he said "Look!" she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed

to gaze full into his face. Then, a sort of amused bewilderment
that her little nervous fingers were always touching his arms

and his hands, and his neck and his throat. But long before he had come
to know that Naomi was not as he was, that Nature had not given her eyes

to see as he saw, and ears to hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak
as he spoke, Nature herself had overstepped the barriers that divided

her from him. He found that Naomi had come to understand him,
whatever in his little way he did, and almost whatever in his little way