This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment, half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely.  But one day the woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, “Israel ben Oliel, the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!”

“Out upon you, woman!” cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her.  Her other predictions had passed him by, but this one had smitten him.  He went home and shut himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to him.

Israel knew his own heart at last.  At his wife’s barrenness he was now angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased.  What was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had first beaten him down?  What did it come to that the world was at his feet?  Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.

That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and his spirit bitter.  And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the ordinances and commandments of God.

Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might straightway be divorced by her husband.

Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel would not answer it.  Then came an order to him from the Governor, but still he paid no heed.  At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of his room.  It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.

“Send me away from you!” she cried.  “Send me away!”

“Not for the place of the Kaid,” he answered stoutly; “no, nor the throne of the Sultan!”

At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their tears together.  But he comforted her at length, and said, “Look up, my dearest! look up!  I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord may deal with me.  And which of us shall murmur against God?”

At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full of a sudden thought.

“Then let us ask of the Lord,” she whispered hotly, “and surely He will hear our prayer.”

“It is the voice of the Lord Himself!” cried Israel; “and this day it shall be done!”

At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki.  And Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and the candles that hung above it, and she prayed:  “O Lord, have pity on this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women.  Give her grace in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed.  Grant her a child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her.  Yet not as she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be satisfied.”