With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to the wall.  The black woman dropped her head that she might not see.  And Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, “O Lord God, long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with scorpions!”

Ruth recovered herself quickly.  “Bring her to me again!” she faltered; and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside.  Then, embracing and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, “It’s your mother, Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed!  Don’t you know her, Naomi?  Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother who loves you so, and must leave you now and see you no more!”

Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the child at last, only God Himself can say.  But first Naomi’s cheeks grew pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened, and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth’s hands again, and then her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself along Ruth’s bosom and nestled close in her embrace.

Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman stood and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any longer was melted and unmanned.  The sun had gone down, and the room was darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in the silence, “God is great, God is great!”

After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother’s bosom, and, seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back to her own bed; but Ruth said, “No; leave her, let me have her with me while I may.”

“No one shall take her from you,” said Israel.

Then she gazed down at the child’s face and said, “It is hard to leave her and never once to have heard her voice.”

“That is the bitterest cup of all,” said Israel.

“I shall not return to her,” said Ruth, “but she shall come to me, and then, perhaps—­who knows?—­perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it.”

Israel made no answer.

Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, “My helpless darling!  Who will care for you when I am gone?”

“Rest, rest, and sleep!” said Israel.

“Ah, yes, I know,” said Ruth.  “How foolish of me!  You are her father, and you love her also.  Yet promise me—­promise—­”

“For love and tending she shall never lack,” said Israel.  “And now lie you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.”

She stretched out her hand to him.  “Yes, that was what I meant,” she said, and smiled.  Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom.  “But when I am gone,” she said, “will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead had wronged her?”

“You have never wronged her,” said Israel.  “Have done, oh, have done!”