With broad white flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the valley to the white peaks of the mountains.

At every flash the little people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light, leading on, yet seeing nothing.
But Israel saw Naomi's shame.

The blindness which was a sense of humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him.

He had asked God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied.

"Give her speech, O Lord," he had cried, "speech that shall lift her above the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know." But what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind?
What was all the world to one who had never seen it?
Only as Paradise is to Man, who can but idly dream of its glories.
Israel took back his prayer.