“She’ll not thank you,” cried Katrina.

“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps of death.  I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.  Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am yours, and no one save her father—­”

“Ah!  Ah!  Ah!”

Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively.  “Trust me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are.  Girls like better things.  No, I’ll give her what will be more to her taste.  She shall stay here with me.”

Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would rather see her dead at my feet.”

Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don’t wag your tongue at your mistress, sir.”

“Your mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”

At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead.  He did not flinch or speak.  The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood trickled over the temple on to the cheek.  There was a short deep pause.

Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry.  It came from behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.

In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the patio.  It was Naomi.  How long she had been there no one knew, and how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce any one—­even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate—­could clearly tell.  She stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance.  Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare wildly.  She had heard the hot words.  She had heard the 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!