Like most girls of today, she understood love as a kind of game and a means of passing the time; and he was of that small class of young men of the age who hold a woman's honor sacred and believe in virtue. How, then, did it come about that they fell in with one another? And how did each of them share in the writing of this story, which must be counted among the marvels and wonders of these days!

Suad lived in a house where everything spoke of wide standing, ample wealth, and rich living. There was the automobile owned by her eldest brother — the second director of the private bank her father owned in the city — carrying her whenever she pleased to wherever she pleased with whomever she pleased: to dancing parties

where she made the acquaintance of scores of young men of every color and every kind, to excursions long and short, and to evening outings in the company of her girlfriends, indulging in varieties of frivolity and amusement, some innocent and some half-innocent — and it would not do to say more than that.

All this while Suad was still sixteen years old, pursuing her studies at one of the well-known schools of Beirut.

The advertisements fill the streets of the city. The students of the American University of Beirut, men and women, are performing the play of Qays and Lubna. A historic event in the world of the stage — the play that cuts the heart with the noble sentiments it carries.

Qays and Lubna is the most

splendid of the love tales in the history of the Arabs. Suad knows that the headmistress of the school, with some of the teachers, is accompanying a large party of students to see this beautiful play — so why should she not be with them? She has grown weary of dancing parties; let her make a change today and go watch a literary, poetic play. But she has no inclination toward acting, and does not like to see actors coming and going on the stage, now shouting, now carousing, imitators and pretenders all!! And besides, she has no taste for poetry and does not understand poetry — how could she sit for three hours running listening to this verse play? But... what would her classmates say of her? And would it not be shameful to confess before them her inability to understand poetry or to savor it?

Crowds of students, men and women, pour into the theater of West Hall. Among these crowds one notices many faces of the country's men of letters, journalists, and men of thought.

All the seats were taken and the hall was packed with spectators. The curtain rises on the tents

of Banu Ka'b on the outskirts of Medina, where Qays, Lubna's beloved, appears, courting her in verse... Who could this be, playing the role of Qays? That dark face, radiant in its darkness, is familiar to Suad — no, she knows it through and through; why then can she not quite place it now? And those two wide black eyes — how often they stopped her as she went down the stairs of the house on her way to school or coming back from it... Suddenly Suad's imagination carried her to the building facing their house in the Ras Beirut quarter, where in one of its rooms lives the handsome student Samir. It is he, without a doubt. What strange chances led her here to listen to him and delight in his voice! How often she saw him standing at the window of his room, absent, silent, his eyes trained toward their house, staring at her room even when she was not in it!! And how often she wondered at the meaning of that long standing and those bewildered, wandering looks Samir sent whenever occasions allowed him — and often they did. The actors went on with their performance, and all of them played their parts well, and Samir soared in the role of Qays until the spectators thought the soul of the ancient Arab poet had passed into the soul of this slender youth, and that the passion which had gnawed at the heart of the worn old poet was the very passion gnawing at the heart of this young man of the twentieth century...

Suad began following the course of the play with pleasure and eagerness, and behold, she understood every scene and spectacle going on around her, and behold, she was a bundle of feelings set ablaze as these sweet love verses reached her ears: Do you remember our sittings