The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.

Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going in the middle of it.  First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly.  Then, a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their shapely arms and hands.  Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes.  Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps—­a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land.  Finally, little black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy’s shy looks of pleasure—­his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and his face aglow.

Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.  It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going forward, and knew that they were children who were making it.  Perhaps the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to her sensitive body.  Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.

But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon, his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi’s excitement.  The girl leaped up from her place at the woman’s feet, and with the utmost rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to the boy’s side.  And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it, and then a low cry came from her lips.  Again she touched it, and her eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire.  Then, with both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.

Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope.  As well as he could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave her.