d on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his
fate. The garden opened upon the great hall, and a number of guests were
standing there, cooling themselves in the night air while they waited
for the arrival of the Sultan. His Shereefian Majesty came at length,
and then, amid salaams and peace-blessings, the company passed in to
the banquet. "Peace on you!" "And on you the peace!" "God make your
evening!" "May your evening be blessed!"

Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh
and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone
in the poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her
damp cell beyond the wall.

Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.

Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down
to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he
had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of
all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by
the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_. That he would
be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was;
that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to
belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali's
trouble. By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had
haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand
to Shawan. He was black, and she would see him.

With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick.
On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him
since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had
played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.
And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had
come to deliver her. Would she recoil from him?

Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.