read in it:

"To my beloved Qarquri, who is beyond all price!

"On a day like this, Father Boulos bound us with the bonds of wedlock. And today — eleven years having passed — death parts us. Shall we meet again, if what they say of the life to come is true? Then you will find me waiting for you on the threshold of that world, my arms open to receive you and my lips made ready for your kiss. And you will hear my question once more: How are you, ya Qarqur? Ah, Aziz! If only you were beside me now! Now, standing in the presence of death, I want to thank you for every kiss you gave me with love and longing. I want to thank you for every word and every gesture and every moment by which you made life dear to me. Minutes passed over me that made me forget there were pains and sorrows in the world; those minutes were among the gifts of your love, and I thank you for them, O Aziz! I dreamed dreams that made me think myself in heaven and not on earth; those dreams were among the breezes of your love, and I thank you for them, O Aziz! I tasted the taste of the happiness of paradise; that happiness was among the fruits of your love, and I thank you for it, O Aziz! And I — what did I offer you in return? I offered you a body clean, beautiful, and pure; in a word, I consecrated my very self to you. And what fault is it of mine if my offering did not match your gifts? You would not be satisfied with me alone; you were not content with Jamila 'by herself' — while I accepted you alone, and none other in all the world. You were to me the all in all. My happiness was made complete by you and by your love; but your happiness was not made complete by my love. You did not show me your true self at the first, but the days uncovered for me what had been hidden from my eyes. I thought you happy in my love, as I was happy to the end in your love alone. And how bitter was the hour in which I discov-ered my error! Do you remember our talk about 'the bridegroom'? Do you remember when I asked you whether your happiness was incomplete without children? Do

you remember your answer? Even so, I tried to deceive myself. I tried to persuade myself that your love of children was like other men's love of them, and that your love for me would stay as it was, whether God granted us a 'bridegroom' or granted us none. And how bitter the truth which the happenings of the years that followed laid bare to me!

"When you had made certain there was no hope of my bearing you children, you cast me out of your life like a date-stone. Nor were you content with that: you loathed me and hated me as though I were a viper's venom. You began with smoking, then with drink, then with cursing me and beating me. Do you remember when you struck me because I refused to go to church wearing all my jewelry? Ah! How sweet were those blows from your hand!

Tell me, in truth: did pity never enter your heart as you watched me move about the house like a deaf and dumb ghost, watching the edifice of my happiness sink down before my eyes, and finding myself a stranger whichever way I turned? Had you forgotten that I was still flesh and blood like you, and that I had not lost the tender feeling of women? Had you hardened until no room at all was left in your heart for tenderness? Ah, how many times in those minutes did I wish you would look into the depths of my soul, as you used once to look into its hidden places with your burning eyes, and see what was stirring there!

"You do not know the pains of a wound in the heart. And the first wound in my heart I took from your hand. It was my dis-covery that your love for me, from beginning to end, was never a love

Tootal — TOOTAL FABRICS

Your pardon, Madam!

Are you certain that you have obtained the goods of

“Tootal”?

When you ask for “Tootal” — TOOTAL — goods,

look along the selvage for the words:

A Tootal Product

This is the only way that guarantees you obtain the genuine “Tootal” products

And should the least flaw be found in one of the “Tootal” products, you may either exchange the fabric or recover the cost of the dress — indeed, the cost of its tailoring as well.

TOOTAL FABRICS

REGD.