The old black Taleb dismissed his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
The negro's prayer was simple to childishness.

It told God everything; it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away and might not know.

The maiden was sick unto death.

She had been three days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing.

She was blind and dumb and deaf.