When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs.  Every child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women stood together closely covered in their blankets—­the mothers and sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther—­then down the crooked passage, past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.

This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a great company of children, their fathers and their teachers.  Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white and blue and black and red—­they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and, perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.

As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people.  “Shoof!” muttered a Moor.  “See!” “It’s himself,” said a Jew.  “And the child,” said another Jew.  “Allah has smitten her,” said an Arab “Blind and dumb and deaf,” said another Moor “God be gracious to my father!” said another Arab.

Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor’s hareem, not yet dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were gazing furtively down from behind their haiks.  There was a fountain in the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.

It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold.  She was a handsome woman, but plainly a heartless one—­selfish, vain, and vulgar.

Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina drew Naomi to her side.

“So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?” said Katrina.

Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman’s feet.

“The darling is as fair as an angel,” said Katrina, and she kissed Naomi.