"Can't you see, woman,
I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
understand?--I want to go to my daughter."
"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more. She is
in the women's apartments--"
Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
"Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."
But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. "Silence!"
he cried. "What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?"
Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. "O
God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
with God for it--"
He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, "Kill her, O God!
Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!"
At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut.
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