her until I drew her blood, saying to her: — Go, you traitress, you vile one! Is it thus you betray my pledges? While you tried to calm my fury and to turn me back from her, and did not succeed.

I raged like a madman when I saw her purity and chastity squandered for the sake of shameful beliefs! When I saw her — my own, my beloved — in the arms of a stranger to us! I could no longer bear to stand there, and I ran out, with you following closer than my shadow.

Some days later I returned to this tower, which was then peopled with soldiers and guards, while you were away from me in Jbeil for a short while, your affairs having compelled you to leave me here with a kinsman of mine. One evening, while most of the guards and soldiers were far off in their camp near the tower, behold, I saw her — my beloved — coming through the meadows; and I was alarmed at the sight of her, and at her daring to violate the laws of the temple, which punish with death every girl chosen by the gods who flees. Yet in the face of her strong love she paid no heed to those laws, but came to me; and here she knelt before me and told me how her father, who feared to disobey the gods, had forced her to join the temple of Afqa; how they carried her there by force, and she resisted greatly, remembering me always; and how the sorceress of the temple, at my beloved's resistance, made use of a secret potion which she gave her, and it robbed her of her senses, and she did not come to herself until she had lost the most precious thing a virgin possesses; so she was compelled to submit to the laws of that age.

And instead of grieving for her and softening, and honoring the sacrifice she had made — flight from the temple, for love of me — I remembered how I had seen her in that man's hands, and my soul flared up and I turned upon her; and no sooner had I done so than she stood erect, threw her arms around me, kissed me a long kiss, then ran toward the deep and cast herself among its raging waves, and I saw her no more.

I was terror-stricken, and violent remorse seized me, and my conscience rebuked me for this deed of mine, for my brutality; and you arrived then, and saw what you saw, and tried to console me, and did not succeed. Ah, the reproach of conscience, the revolt of the heart! My pains did not leave me even after my first death then...

And behold me in this age, returning to the earth a second time, my suffering soul returning clothed in this body; and I see Quds, come back in the body of an attractive modern girl, and I do not know her. And as though the memories of the past were still stamped upon our two souls, I inclined to her at first sight and she inclined to me, when we were in the bloom of youth, years ago. And I do not wonder now at that sudden love, for our two souls have been in harmony from all eternity.

At the beginning of my life in this modern age my father sent me to perfect my studies at one of the schools of Beirut, and she too went; and our love kept growing until we returned to the neighboring village, having gained an ample share of learning.

And while everyone was awaiting the happy day on which I should attain my wish and she hers, and marriage should bind our two enamored hearts, behold, she fled with one of the young men of the village, suddenly, without warning; and he married her and robbed me of her.

I saw her after a time and reproached her, and she could find no answer; then she looked at me long and said:

— I do not know. I loved you and I love you still. Only I do not know what inner force compelled me to torment you! For I did what I did only to make you taste the bitterness of parting. And with all this I still love you, and I hate myself because I have caused you these pains. Yet were it given me to do the same thing over again, I would not hold back — to increase your torment and mine.

Thereupon something like a touch of madness struck me and I fell down unconscious; and I awoke, and behold, I am as you see me now: I see the distant past, and I understand that I have but returned to the earth a second time, and that she returned with me, that I might receive from her the like of what she received from me in our first life — that pain might purify my sinning soul, and misery smelt its metal until it comes back pure, fit to meet the pure, chaste soul of the beloved.

After some years she died, and her husband died. And since I was a man of means, I took to caring for her two children, whom some of her kin have sheltered; and behold me making my weekly round, living in the distant past, moving between this tower and the remains of the temple, until pains smelt away all the soul's stains and the spirit returns to its own world.

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