rely He looked before and after, and
foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
this evil upon him!

But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
breathless quiet.

And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.

"Ah!"

It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
nothing but an evil dream.

In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
and said within himself, "It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!"

Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
the room on tiptoe.

CHAPTER XIII

NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT

With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
disrobed.

It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
more as of old did she