ed. "Did I not tell you it would
break my heart?"

"Try her again," said Israel; "try her again."

Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back
to her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,
she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were
on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.
This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to
her always. But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to
know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,
and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of
recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her
mother's arms, and bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly
began to laugh and to dance.

The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on
her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white
nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing
did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was
slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her
innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying
of the dearest friend she had known on earth.

On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down
at speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but
still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull
red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and
laughing in the midst of it.

With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to
the wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And
Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, "O Lord God,
long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with
scorpions!"

Ruth recovered herself quickly. "Bring her to me again!" she faltered;
and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing
and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her
trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, "It's your mother,
Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know
her, Naomi? Your mother, your own mother, sweet one