Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land.

Finally, little black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and his face aglow.
Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going forward, and knew that they were children who were making it.

Perhaps the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to her sensitive body.

Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.
But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon, his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement.

The girl leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to the boy's side.