ess came over him. He had been
thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
no children.

This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, "Israel ben Oliel,
the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!"

"Out upon you, woman!" cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
him.

Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.

That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
ordinances and commandments of God.

Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
straightway be divorced by her husband.

Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.

"Send me away from you!" she cried. "Send me away!"

"Not for the place of the Kaid,