hen the great winds were
abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
eyes bent down.

But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
that stood in it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress
increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things;
it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.

Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
longing from