“Yes,” said Israel, “your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the days before your great gifts came to you.  But she is gone, she has left us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of memory can she smile back upon us now.”

Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears, and she said abruptly, “People who die are deceitful.  They want to go out in the night to be with God.  That is where they are when they go away.  They are wandering about the world when it is dead.”

The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no search availed to find her.  She was not in the Mellah, and therefore she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at sunset.  Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before their tents.  At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there he found her.  It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent.  The reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the distant hum of voices came over the black town walls.  And there, within the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and crying, “Mother!  Mother!”

Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat and fumes of the town.  The day was soft and beautiful, the water was quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it.  But Naomi listened to every sound with eager intentness—­the light plash of the blue wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to unload the cargoes.

And when she came home, and took her old place at her father’s knees, with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him another sweet and startling story.  There was only one thing in the world that did not die at night, and it was water.  That was because water was the way from heaven to earth.  It went up into the mountains and over them into the air until it was lost in the clouds.  And God and His angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth.  That was why it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.  And the angels were always singing.  That was why the waters were always making a noise, and were never silent like the grass.  Sometimes their song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters were terrible.  Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.  The angel was glad.