Then, when he perceived that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him.

He had been thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride.

After that he never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given no children.
This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment, half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely.

But one day the woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, "Israel ben Oliel, the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!" "Out upon you, woman!" cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her.

Her other predictions had passed him by, but this one had smitten him.