The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together.  They reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from his post), and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was over.  There had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets around it were deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the direction of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep.  The Spaniard was coming, and the townsmen were going out to meet him.  Casual passers-by challenged them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised they had nothing to fear from the people, yet more than once his voice trembled when he answered, and sometimes with a feeling of dread he turned to see that no one was following.

As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of Naomi’s prison.  By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by Naomi was looking at him.  Again and again, as the glare fell for an instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face.  At such moments he thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them seemed wider.  But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head aside, and hastened on.

“What matter about me?” he whispered again.  But the brave word brought him no comfort.  “Now she’s looking at my hand,” he told himself, but he could not draw it away.  “She is doubting if I am Ali after all,” he thought.  “Naomi!” he tried to say with averted head, so that once again the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and he could not speak.  Still he pushed on.

The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has been gathering is about to break.  In the air a deep rumble, and then a loud detonation.  Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to move and pass.

Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of Israel’s humiliation and Naomi’s shame, Ali, with the girl beside him, came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people.  It was the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the gates were coming in on the east.  The Mahdi himself was locking the synagogues and the sanctuaries.

“Lock them up,” he was saying.  “It is enough that the foreigner must burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our God.”

Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.

“I have brought her,” he said breathlessly; “Naomi, Israel’s daughter, this is she.”  And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the eyes of the three.