ain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
she had done.

"Where is she?" he cried. "Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
not here? Lead me to her, lead me!"

Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. "Alas!" she said, weeping, "that
cannot be."

Israel steadied himself and waited. "She cannot come to you, and neither
can you go to her." said Fatimah. "But she is well, oh! very well.
Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--"

With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
lived a lifetime in that moment.

"The palace!" he said in a bewildered way. "The women's palace--the
women's--" and then broke off shortly. "Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,"
he said.

And Fatimah stammered, "Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--"

"Fatimah," said Israel, with an awful calm. "Can't you see, woman,
I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
understand?--I want to go to my daughter."

"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more. She is
in the women's apartments--"

Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.

"Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."

But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. "Silence!"
he cried. "What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?"

Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. "O
God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled