watching over and guarding her daughter-in-law’s comfort. And that, in her understanding, was confined to not letting Jamileh do any of the work of the house. So when she was absent from the house one day for an hour or two and came back to find her daughter-in-law in the courtyard with the broom in her hand, she nearly went out of her senses: “Woe is me, woe is me! Would I had never been! Would I were under the earth! Should one like you sweep? Hands like yours are fit for nothing but gold and satins and silk. Give it here — give it here — give it here, and go find yourself a book to read!”

In vain Jamileh tried to prove to her mother-in-law that there was no shame in housework, that sweeping did not tire her, and that she had grown weary of sitting and reading and therefore wanted bodily exercise. Such proofs might convince Abu Aziz, but Umm Aziz had drunk from the spring of another philoso-phy. Her philosophy was that “daughters of the great” must do no work at all except eating, drinking, and dressing elegantly. Otherwise, what would the world say of them?

When Aziz came back that night and Jamileh received him as was her custom, his mother hurried toward him and began to complain to him — in a voice one quarter jest and three quarters earnest — of what she had seen from the “qarqoura” that day in her attempt to clean the house. Aziz agreed with his mother in all she said — that sweeping, dusting, dishwashing, and the like were “no business of well-bred girls” — and he at once exacted a promise from Jamileh, against her will, that she would never return to such work.

And the next day he went and hired a maidservant, in answer to his mother’s urging and in accordance with his own opinion. And so that Jamileh might have something with which to pass her long hours of leisure, he would bring her from time to time a novel or a magazine or a newspa-

per, and Jamileh read every novel her husband brought her.

But she was not content with reading; she felt that the powers of youth in her demanded bodily work along with the work of the mind, and she grieved to see herself deprived of that pleasure to please her husband and his mother and his father.

Yet this emptiness in her life would not have troubled her mental and spiritual repose had it not begun to widen with the days until she could no longer avoid seeing it — above all when she began to feel a coldness from her husband in her relations with him.

A year passed after their mar-riage, and a second followed it, and every new day confirmed to Jamileh that an abyss had opened its mouth between her and Aziz. He still called her “qarqoura,” and she still called him “qarqour” and received him every evening at the door or at the foot of the outer stairs. But that tenderness in his voice and that eagerness in his eyes had evaporated like the tears of dew from the cheeks of flowers after sunrise, and no trace remained of that gentle smile, the lover’s smile, on his handsome face. His face was no longer, as before, a polished mirror reflecting every movement of his spirit and his heart; it had become now the face of a limpid sea beneath which life plays out hidden scenes the eye does not see and the ear does not hear. And that divine light in his eyes, which used to fill her heart with the sweetest melodies of happiness and love, was extinguished now, and in its place had settled a deep black thought, from which cold breezes blew upon the soul of Jamileh — who still loved with all her powers.

This strange revolution had not come suddenly, but by degrees. Jamileh began to notice it after the first year of her union had passed; and now she saw it increase day by day. Her heart ached, and she did not show the ache on her face, for fear that the last drop of the happiness her soul and her whole being still craved should evaporate from

her spirit. It seemed to her at times that what had come over their life was only a cloud passing across the sky of their happiness, which would soon clear away — above all when she asked herself the causes of the change that had come about in her husband’s relations with her, and could not find them. She still loved him as before, if not more. Her lips still longed for his lips, and her breast for his breast. She still awaited his return every evening with burning impatience, standing at the door, her eyes fixed in one direction — the direction from which he would come. In short, Aziz was still her “qarqour.” What, then, had come over Aziz?

This question went on tormenting Jamileh day after day and night after night, until once, by chance, she overheard this brief exchange between her mother-in-law and Aziz:

— My son, how long will you be patient? Look to your wife and manage her.

— And how shall I manage her? Am I a lord, to create children?

— Come now! Is this how people do? Take her to Beirut. Take her to Damascus. Or let me manage her. Is our line to be cut off like this, when our hands are full?

— For God’s sake, mother, let me be. What is in my heart is enough for me. Do as you please! ...

This short talk between Umm Aziz and Aziz explained to Jamileh everything her aching soul had long yearned to know; but knowing the secret did not lighten her pains — rather it added constriction to her heart and aches to her soul. And what was to be done? She loved Aziz and would not hesitate a moment to die for his sake, and there was nothing in the world she would find it hard to sacrifice to bring his love back to her. But Aziz demanded as the price of his love what neither she nor the whole world had it in their power to offer. He demanded children of her — and what was her sin, if she was barren? She no longer cared about the pains of soul caused by her realization that what she had feared had now