filled with troubles and terrors and hardships. He loved it and worked for its sake without tiring. He never weakened when difficulty confronted him. How many a dif-ficulty he had subdued, continuing on his toilsome way, heedless...

He had given life much... given without reckoning. Nor had he hoped that it would trade with him gift for gift and bounty for bounty, for he believed that life takes and does not give. His one concern was that circumstances should favor him, so that he might join to his own life the life of a girl he loved with the most perfect love that honorable love can be, and the loftiest height to which it can rise.

He had never thought that every-thing has an end... And supposing that were true, was it right for him to despair, and to look toward his morrow hopeless and doubting, when he was still in the flower of his age, with long years between him and the end?...

For he had looked to the future with joy... and he had striven to prepare that future with strong and eager energy.

And in this hour... in this hour in which he was shaking hands with death... and with extinction... in this hour that cut the bond between him and the life he had loved — cut it forever...

And in this hour that carried him away from his beloved, and from his mother, a distance after which there is no meeting... in all of this, Suleiman appeared more attached than ever to life, and to his beloved, and to his mother; and he wished from his inmost heart that he might be granted one single day more of existence, in which to bid farewell to those he loved.

And then he began, in imagina-tion, to pass in review his happy days in the quiet, tranquil village... as though he were bidding farewell, with an inward glance, for the last time, to those dear haunts — the haunts where, for the first time in his life, he had seen the beautiful face of nature.

"...Here... ah, in this corner, chance brought me together, in an hour of the night, with dear Wafiyya. Where are you, Wafiyya... O loss of sweet hopes... Will you keep faith with my love?... Do you still remember Suleiman?

Suleiman... if he is absent from you the long absence?...

"How I grieve for you, Wafiyya! You left your family and went against their judgment, to be mine and no other's... Ah, how cruel is tyrannous fate! How can it part me from you... when I... I love you, Wafiyya... O Death, grant me the respite of one day, in which to see the beloved... Ah... death has no mercy... I feel my strength as though it had melted away... and vanished... My heart!... My heart!... it is almost withered dry..."

And then, with an instinctive movement, he stretched his hand to his pocket and drew out a fistful of gold liras, eyeing them with eyes worn down by fatigue, and he fell to staring at the gold and talking to himself:

"I toiled hard to gain these liras... yes, I toiled! But of what use are they?... How ignorant I was!... Will they give me back my life?... No! Money is of no use now... Ah! the way of living is lost!... Would that I could return to my labors, poor... owning not a dirham... but toiling for my mother's sake..."

And he felt a cold shudder when

the memory of his mother passed through his imagination. He had loved his mother with a deep love... and he had striven to provide her with the means of comfort and happiness... And now, hovering between death and life, far from her, he pictured her, and had not the strength to fix his gaze on her or think of her for long... He was weary... and the thought of his mother wore him out... for he feared she would die of it after he was gone...

But he returned to remembering Wafiyya... She was there, close beside his mother... consoling her, taking her hand...

"Yes... be a support to my mother, Wafiyya, when I am gone!...

"Help her... I am sure of your faithfulness... You will not let my mother drink the bitterness of despair! Yes, Wafiyya, you will not leave my mother... my mother... Wafiyya... Wafiyya!..."

And he lost consciousness, and drifted into another world, with these two words — "my mother... Wafiyya" — clinging between his lips!

Arco Paints

Most of the world's cars use Arco paints

PEINTURE POUR L'INDUSTRIE

SPECIFY ARCO

MADE IN U.S.A.

Nitro — for automobiles; and Synthetic — for buses, trucks, motorcars, and the like. Together with all painting supplies. A special department for mixing colors of every kind, at the agents:

Ibrahim Youssef Saad & Sons — Beirut, Souk al-Jamil