joy like her joy.
Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the
world cannot freeze. . . . And if you are a little helpless girl--blind
and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all. She cannot tell
you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she
cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to
you, because you cannot speak; but she can watch your quiet face, and
feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry
laughter."

"My mother! my mother!" whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.

"Yes," said Israel, "your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
memory can she smile back upon us now."

Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,
and she said abruptly, "People who die are deceitful. They want to go
out in the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go
away. They are wandering about the world when it is dead."

The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore
she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at
sunset. Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or
among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before
their tents. At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there
he found her. It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The
reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the
distant hum of voices came over the black town walls. And there, within
the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that
lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the
darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and
crying, "Mother! Mother!"

Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat
and fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was
quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened
to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue
wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when
the Levanter chased them and caught them, the di