She knew the flowers that grew in the fields outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap, as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands.

She seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she would lay on her bosom.

And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them that were about her.

Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she knew no delight like to that of playing with other children.

But her father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did she ever meet.
Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel.