Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
aside, and hastened on.

"What matter about me?" he whispered again. But the brave word brought
him no comfort. "Now she's looking at my hand," he told himself, but
he could not draw it away. "She is doubting if I am Ali after all," he
thought. "Naomi!" he tried to say with averted head, so that once again
the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and
he could not speak. Still he pushed on.

The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to
move and pass.

Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was
the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the
town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the
gates were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the
synagogues and the sanctuaries.

"Lock them up," he was saying. "It is enough that the foreigner must
burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our
God."