sweet. Not yet had the great mystery
dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and
when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.
Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had
seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of
her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden
no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of
human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.

It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the
better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length
in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but
voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so
deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never
heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete
with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart.
All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was
still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her,
they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across
the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their
hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and
only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.

Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely
from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
favourite song was still her mother's:--

Oh, come and claim thine own,
Oh, come and take thy throne,
Reign ever and alone
Reign glorious, golden Love.

Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a
maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think
of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was
even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she
were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.

Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like
the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future
would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the
rapture, the blissful wond