“A daisy, my child,” Israel answered.

“A daisy!” she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, “Oh, yes, so it is; it is only a daisy.”

But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a long task if a beautiful one.  They were some miles inside the coast, but from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, “The sky! the sky!  Look!  It has fallen on to the land.”

“That is the sea, my child,” said Israel.

“The sea!” she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed out and her beautiful face looked aside, “So it is—­yes, it is the sea.”

Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun, until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast.  Still the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized upon her sight.  The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless sea-birds.  From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.

It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour in fear and consternation.  And when she returned to her father, she told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea, and fought in the air and killed each other.  “And see!” she cried; “look at this, and this, and this!”

Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the devilish warfare that she had witnessed and “This,” said he, lifting one of them, “is a sea-bird’s feather; and this,” lifting another, “is a sea-bird’s egg; and this,” lifting the third, “is a dead sea-bird itself.”

Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.  “Ah yes,” she said meekly, looking into her father’s eye, with a smile, “they are only that after all.”  And then she said very quietly, as if speaking to herself, “What a long time it is before you learn to see!”