What hand had led her?
What power had taught her?
Was it merely that her far-reaching ears had heard the tumult?
Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness, filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought, of great and impending evil?
Or was it some other influence, some higher leading?
Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always, and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn was following God?
When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them, though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well, and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had infected them.

And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going back to the house.
"Come," said Habeebah; "let us go--we are not safe." "Yes," said Fatimah; "let us take the poor child back." "Come along, then," said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
"Naomi, Naomi," whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, "we are going home.
Come, dearest, come." But Naomi was not to be moved.

No gentle voice availed to stir her.
She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd, motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been terrible.

For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been learning speech and the different voices of men.

All that was spoken in that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse, jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air.