to cast down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer
life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived
that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been
thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
no children.

This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, "Israel ben Oliel,
the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!"

"Out upon you, woman!" cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
him.

Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.