down again, are we? This is no time for sitting!"

Everyone shared with Aziz in his affliction and his trial. Few were those with any pity in their hearts for Jamila. If she left her house, every mother in the town would come out carrying an infant, and drawing near Jamila would address her child thus: "Fuad!" — or Boutros, or Hanna — "clap for your auntie Jamila, my boy, clap! May these two sweet hands lay me in my grave, by the glory of the Lord of Heaven!"

All this that Jamila might hear it and her wounded heart bleed. And Jamila would listen in silence and weep in silence, and in silence her soul grew bitter against life and the world. When she walked she felt as though she were walking over the corpses of her hopes, cut down around her by the days. When she slept she felt she was lying on the ruins of her demolished happiness. What was left to her in this world, and why should she go on living?

But had all her hopes withered away utterly?

Why, then, did she still say: "Perhaps? Perhaps God will yet be gracious to me!.." And if God were gracious to her — would that lost happiness come back? In vain did Jamila try to answer these questions, for she had become a stranger to herself. The darkness that had closed around her soul left her no opening through which to study its recesses and secrets. So it was beyond her to render herself an account of herself, and she found surrender to the days the easiest road to take. For this reason she did not oppose her mother-in-law's will when the latter announced to her one day that she had resolved to take her to visit an old monastery dedicated to the Virgin, with whose miracles women's hearts are gladdened.

Whoever says the age of miracles is past, let him go to the town

of "A—" in the districts of Lebanon and ask what happened in the year 1910. A woman had remained barren ten years; the science of doctors availed her nothing, the drugs of the Moroccans did not help her, and many monasteries brought her no cure. But Our Lady — glory to her name! — heard the fervent prayer of Umm Aziz al-Kirbaj.

Yes, Umm Aziz's petitions were not disappointed: Jamila con-ceived that year. And how swift was the change that came over the house at once — nay, over the whole town! Aziz went back

to calling her "my Qarqura," though Jamila no longer loved to hear that name, which tore her heart like a sharp dagger, and she no longer called her husband "my Qarqur."

And Aziz began coming home in the evening with every kind of foodstuff and gift in his hands and his pockets. The maid, too, came back to the Kirbaj house. And Umm Aziz once more exclaimed, whenever she saw her daughter-in-law wiping the dust from a chair or stirring the food in a pot: "Wa balli! Wa balli! May you live to bury your mother-in-law, God willing!"

Jantzen

Spending the summer at the beach is a lovely thing..

Spending the summer in Jantzen styles is lovelier still..

Jantzen is designed especially to bring out your beauty!..

Jantzen

Worn by swimmers the whole world over

Jantzen swimsuits are sold at the shops of Barnaba, Debs, Bechara Brothers, Choukri Kheirallah, Gibran al-Metni, and Orosdi-Back.