to her out of
the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
say, "Fool! she hears, but does she understand?" he remembered how he
had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
"Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?"

But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's
soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
her feet.

Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, "Let the
Lord find His own way to her spirit." So he continued to speak with
her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
for her soul to know.

It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.

Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.