"The darling is as fair as an angel," said Katrina, and she kissed
Naomi.

The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.

Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of
pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
and his face aglow.

Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.

But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl
leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost
rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
the boy's side. And, being there, she touched the harp as