He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.
And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young motherhood.

Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to him! But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could not help but feel pain from them also.

They had a perilous fascination for him, but he grudged them to Naomi.

He thought he could have given his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give.

That was his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty as a father.