again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.

She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from
the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She
knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by
the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap,
as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She
seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she
would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she
would lay on her bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto
the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.

Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she
knew no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her
father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was
allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met
in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did
she ever meet.

Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of
the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only
child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
child that is blind and dumb.