So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said, “It is well, all is well with the child.  She will look upon my face and see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue will yet speak to me, and make me very glad.”  And then an ineffable serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.

But when the time was come that a child’s eyes, having grown familiar with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth’s child did not open in seeing, but lay idle and empty.  And when the time was ripe that a child’s ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a mother’s love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth’s child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.

Then Ruth’s spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, “Wait, Ruth; only wait, only a little longer.”

So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the prattle of its little lips.  But never a sound as of speech seemed to break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue, and never once across her baby’s face passed the light of her tearful smile.  It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the pains she was at to conceal them.  Thus, every day at midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then, she would drop her head and say, “How sweet the air is to-day, and how pleasant to sit in the sun!”

“So it is,” he would answer, “so it is.”

Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh—­a little shrill laugh like a cry—­and cover her face in confusion.

“How merry you are, sweetheart,” he would say, and then pass into the house.

For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw, and pretending not to hear what he heard.  But every day his heart bled at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very soul had sickened, and he cried, “Have done, Ruth!—­for mercy’s sake, have done!  The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison.  Her eyes are darkness, like the tomb’s, and her ears are silence, like the grave’s.  Never will she smile to her mother’s smile, or answer to her father’s speech.  The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the first face she will see will be the face of God.”

At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.  The hope that she had cherished was dead.  Israel could comfort her no longer.  The fountain of his own heart was dry.  He drew a long breath, and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.