ars and kisses, like the commerce of a
mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's
close abode, waiting to be born anew.

When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.
And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
fit of weeping.

"Tut! tut! what is this?" he said. "I will be back to-morrow. Do you
hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow."

When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.

The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
God Himself might have revealed to her.

"Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?" cried Fatimah.

"Alack! girl," said Habeebah, "the maid is sickening again."

And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
agitation. She slept that night from