him stir restlessly without answering; she looked at him with startled eyes, then withdrew from his side, dazed, a tear welling between the long lashes.
And she said, communing with herself: Perhaps he has grown weary of this monotonous life whose days never change. Let me bring him a matchless library whose books will draw him into their gleaming climes, from which he may look out upon the ages gone by and the bright present ages that followed them, and whose authors will fly with him to the homelands of imagination and beauty.
And she rubbed her silver ring, and her genie rose at once, offering her his service; and he carried out what he was bidden, and the rare library stood at the disposal of her beloved young man...
But nothing in that library dispelled the gloom that no longer left the dear husband's face. Yet she did not despair — perhaps he yearned to see people... And was man created to live alone??
And she began gently to lay her idea before him, once she had resolved upon it.
And no long while passed before he had great warehouses whose like had never been seen in that city; and behold, workmen awaiting his orders, and behold, customers to whom he presented his terms. His trade prospered with a prosperity that took away his sullenness, distracted him from his brooding, and restored the sweet smiles to the lips of the tender husband.
* * *
Night fell thick and heavy, and the palace and all in it grew as still as the sleepers of the long Cave. The garden clock struck its resounding eleven strokes, rousing the wife, who had been waiting for her husband's return since sunset by the great thicket. She rose to put out the shining lights one by one — but instead
of making for the palace stairs and then for her bed as usual — she walked slowly toward the great door, then crossed it to the outside, an idea having risen in her head...
Here are the waves quivering on the sands of the shore; here are the stars sending their pale light down to the earth; and here are the painful memories pouring in upon the mind of (the maiden of the sea), showing her a black world in which there is nothing but every dissembler, hypocrite, deceiver, and trickster. And is not (he) of this world too, and of the sons of man? No... no, he shall not be of their kind; he is nobler than they. But are not the messengers and the prophets also of this world??
And she went on walking forward, justifying to herself the end she sought; she walked an hour or part of one, and stopped at last before her husband's warehouses, locked, silent with the silence of that night, gazing at them from a heart bursting with tears... Good God! How deluded she had been when she believed in his innocence...
An elderly watchman passed by her and stopped to ask what she wanted at that last watch of the night; and when he saw the distraction of her mind and the sorrow of her lovely face... he understood. He bowed his head a moment, then raised that head, heavy with the experience of days, to say to her in a voice grieving, as though he felt he was sounding in it the death-knell of her hopes: He is there, my lady, in the arms of a beautiful mistress who pours him the wine of passion in brimming cups...
He said this and vanished quickly, to hide a tear that quivered between his lids in the pale light of the street, out of pity for broken beauty and for cursed virtue.
And swiftly she too disappeared
behind him, wrapped in the folds of darkness — not to wipe away the trace of the precious tears, but to throw herself in surrender into the bosom of the beloved sea, and to swear for the last time that she would never try man a second time...
And on the morrow, there was the fisherman roaming the markets, asking and searching after his estates, his buildings, his trade, his glory, and his fair one...
And whenever he passed by anyone, there was drawn upon that person's face, at his condition, an image of pain for him and pity upon him...
That is because no one perceived that he had never been mad at all — and that he was only facing... his own truth — for the first time in his life.
Miss Wadia Shatara, who graduated from the English College in Beirut and took her certificate in 1910.
All these schools, moreover, prepare their students for the London matriculation, the Palestine matriculation, and Oxford and Cambridge. Seven girls from Haifa sat for this last examination and passed it, and three of them were exempted from taking the "matric" examination, because those in charge judged their intelligence and their attainments to be above the required standard.
And now — has this piece, laden with figures, wearied you? The first thing a woman hates, and the last, is arithmetic; so I have excused you in advance, and our next appointment is when we meet on a green and level stretch of ground, with no hillocks and no hills... Until we meet again...
(Acre — Palestine)