But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in the darkness were silent and made no answer.  Then he staggered back, and Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose him.  But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.

When the Rabbi’s death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered, “It is the first-fruits!” and the Moors touched their foreheads and murmured “It is written!”

CHAPTER II

THE BIRTH OF NAOMI

Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in comfort many years together.  In the south-east corner of the Mellah he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but also with windows and with doors.  And when his house was raised he put no haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and Jews.

And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a prison for his wife.  In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had reduced even her friends to that number.  Her father was dead; if she was the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.  Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with them was mainly by signs.

Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on Israel’s mind, one hope on his heart—­that Ruth might soon bear a child.  Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman might know on earth.  And, if he had wronged her, his child would make amends.

Israel thought of this again and again.  The delicious hope pursued him.  It was his secret, and he never gave it speech.  But time passed, and no child was born.  And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began to cast down her head before her husband.  Israel’s hope was of longer life, but the truth dawned upon him at last.  Then, when he perceived that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him.  He had been thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride.  After that he never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given no children.