sound of the blow
that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!

At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!

They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
This, only this, was she!

And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. "Oh!
oh!" she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.

Israel saw everything. "Naomi!" he cried in a choking voice, and
stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
and paused and hesitated.

"Naomi!" he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
her father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to
his breast, and,