A Box of Chocolates

She was then in her fifteenth year, and there was upon her a touch of Greek beauty: the features of her face resembled the statues of the gods of Greece, whose pictures she had so often seen in the magazines or the history books! She was in the final year of her secondary schooling, but she was weak in the Arabic language — not from any laziness on her part, but because she had been brought up in schools that gave no encouragement to the poor language.

The headmistress of the school informed her that unless she took private lessons she would not be able to obtain the certificate; and the headmistress, ever watchful over the school's interests, found her an able teacher. The teacher was a poet and an artist, an elegant young man of standing in society — and the poor girl became the envy of no small number of the fair sex.

The artist would enter the room behind her and ask her to read! He did not correct many of her mistakes, for he was not listening to her or to what she was saying; he was gazing at the living statue beside him. The number of lessons grew from three a week to four, for the teacher's visits to instruct her — and to contemplate the features of her face — grew more frequent, as did his publication of love poems in the daily papers and the weekly magazines. Many people remarked his strangeness and his absence of mind on many an occasion. In the lesson he would speak to her less than he would expound to her the landmarks of art in painting and in art!

And how often he lectured her on Venus, and on the beauty of Diana!

One evening — the lesson hour falling after sunset — he stopped her recitation and said: "When is your birthday?"

She knew him for a "gentleman," and understood that by this question he meant to give her a present. And it is customary to give boxes of sweets and chocolates; so she swallowed hard, forgetting that her birthday had passed three months before, and said: "In two weeks — on the eleventh of next month."

A few days later she had forgotten the appointed date; one day went by, another followed, and lo, the eleventh of the new month arrived, and with it the teacher came to the school, although it was not the day of the lesson. She was in her bed, feigning illness, when her companion came in to her carrying a large, oblong white parcel and said:

"With the teacher's compliments."

She sprang from her bed, remembering that today her birthday was coming round a second time that year, and called her companions — for the box she had promised them days before had arrived. The girls crowded around her while her hands undid the red ribbon and pushed aside the white papers; one of the girls swallowed audibly — and the paper at last fell away from... a book.

And the book was a commentary on old pictures of the gods of the Greeks.