Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_.
That he would be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was; that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali's trouble.By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand to Shawan.He was black, and she would see him.
With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this, flashed upon his mind.His shame was abject.It cut him to the quick.
On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood.
She had played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night!
He had come to deliver her.Would she recoil from him?
Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.
But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose.
"What matter?" he thought."What matter about me?" he asked himself aloud in a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head.
Then he found himself inside the cell.
The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief.