And whither
Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
direction.
On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
his sight.
Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
laugh.
"Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?"
But no sound came back to him.
Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
voice of fear.
"Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?"
Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
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