How broad and well-made it is, this road leading to Dhour el-Choueir, the bride of our summer resorts. It is smooth, gleaming, dusky... and the car that carries us steals glances at its own shadow running behind it at the very same speed! It is as if this car, in its distraction and skittishness, senses the loneliness and the desolation! How far it is from its state last year, when it used to meet hundreds of cars racing nimbly up toward the mountain and down toward Beirut... So no blame falls on this car if it feels forlorn...

This is what was running through my mind at the moment my companion cut across the stream of my thoughts and lifted her voice in beloved country airs, which the deep valleys echoed back, blending with the breaths of sunset, sending into the eyelids something like drowsiness and languor...

I closed my eyes, listening with all my senses... while the cold mountain breeze played with my hair... A few soft, delicious moments passed... How wonder-ful is this abiding bliss we live in, here in this calm, serene country! Do we, I wonder, appreciate the blessing we enjoy?

I felt the car stop suddenly and heard the driver rouse us from our reverie, which had nearly become a doze! In a single instant I was on the sidewalk in front of a shop: A. B. C. I cast my eyes in every direction to catch some engaging scene to pass on to the readers of “The Woman's Voice” — for theirs is this interval at the end of my day!

Let us rest a little in the café bordering the main road... The seats are almost touching one another, and the crowd keeps steadily growing... Here comes the waiter, asking politely what we would like. — Lemonade... — And five minutes later we sit drinking the cold lemonade. Now the orchestra has begun to play that classical piece, “La Paloma”!... The soft, harmonious strains soothe the nerves and rest the senses from the weariness of work... I sank back in my chair, relaxed and still, watching the movement and listening to the din rising from the street and from the customers inside... studying people's faces at close range... Most of them are alike, of a single pattern; the stranger among them is rare and few, and the colloquial accents are much the same...

Now and then a Palestinian accent rises, and necks crane

toward its owner and eyes fasten on it, questioning, and we hear the word: “Refugees!”... Poor souls they are!! Their number grows from day to day... We can tell them by their mournful faces feigning smiles... and by the bewildered looks in their eyes that betray fear of a dark, unknown future.

Near us sat a party of elegant young men with an unmistakable Beiruti air about them... They were conferring and agreeing among themselves to spend the evening listening to “Carmen Badi,” that slender blonde singer around whom, these two years past, a band of admirers and devotees has gathered... Her fame has spread through the circles of Beirut and the mountain, and her name is heard passing on every tongue...

No desire will be born in me to look upon Carmen Badi's face, masked with artifice, or to listen to her false voice... So — to the Hotel Kassouf... Come, let us watch the dancing there; it is half past seven, and today is Sunday, so there is bound to be a crush and a bustle...

...My guess proved right. At Kassouf it was impossible for us to find a table and two chairs — no more! — for me and my companion! But thanks be to circumstance: here is the hand of a friend waving to us from afar, inviting us to join their party. And we did not need to be told twice!... I opened with the question: