It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took shapes of supernatural horror or splendour.  One early evening, when she had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the sky.  They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind the world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of heaven.

Israel listened to her and said, “That was the sunset my child.  Every morning the sun rises and every night it sets.”

Then she looked full into his face and blushed.  Her shame at her sweet errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, “After all, the eyes are deceitful.”  Vision was life’s new language, and she had yet to learn it.

But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world to be damped by any thought of herself.  Nay, the best and rarest part of it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself alone.  On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off with her on the waters in a boat.  The air was still, the sea was smooth, the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky was blue.  They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with heather and long stalks of seeding grass.  Through whispering beds of rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming fishes were at play.  Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles and great stones.  It was a morning of God’s own making, and, for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and embrace it.

At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she knew it first.  For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun’s reflected disc on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.

“Father,” she cried with alarm, “a face in the water!  Look! look!”

“It is your own, my child,” said Israel.  “Mine!” she cried.

“The reflection of your face,” said Israel; “the light and the water make it.”