...would take leave of May's salon so that their pens might set forth with licit magic and lofty eloquence; and every one of them yearned for May's salon, eager to hasten the coming of that day, that in its atmosphere he might wipe away his dry toils and forget his thorny labor, renewing the hidden powers within his soul.

You will find this word pressing in two verses by Ismail Sabri, spoken of May in defiance of the days:

My soul wanders among certain houses of the quarter, like a thirsting bird, longing for water; if tomorrow I do not delight my eyes with May, I shall disown your morning, O Tuesday.

And you will find it as a lament filled with grief and longing, cried out by the poet Khalil Mutran at May's fortieth-day memorial gathering, in eulogy:

Desolate is the house — where is your salon, O May, to which the delegations came and went? The elect of the two Easts in nobility and merit thronged in your spacious shelter.

Just as May encouraged the intellectual movement, so too she worked to awaken the women's movement, breathing into it a great deal of her own spirit. She held views and theories concerning it which her voice long proclaimed, now as orator, now as lecturer, as writer or as conversationalist.

May's views on woman are the views of the female who has remained cheated of her right since the beginning of creation — the female springing forward with all her pride and self-confidence, demanding emancipation for her sisters, women with foreheads held high beneath the crown of resolve and struggle, the shadows of submission and abjection van-ished from their eyes and replaced by the gaze of one who is no longer the slave of society, nor the slave of need, nor the slave of man.

Yet her views are moderate, not reckless: while she calls upon woman to emancipate herself, she

calls upon her to found her emancipation upon knowledge and restraint; and then she grows afraid for her, lest she see her mistake the true meaning of emancipation, and she reproves her, saying: "Go back and kneel before the little one, and beg his pardon."

As for May's loyalty to the daugh-ters of her sex, it shows plainly in her three studies — Bahithat al-Badiya, Warda al-Yaziji, and Aisha al-Taymuriyya — and I firmly believe she added to their merit, for she loved them all, however their inclinations differed and their paths diverged.

May took an active part in Egypt's women's renaissance, joining as a member in the meetings held at the old Egyptian University under the presidency of Mrs. Huda Shaarawi, the first to carry the torch of the women's renaissance in the East. That lady — God rest her soul — held a lofty opinion of May, and spoke of her more

loftily still, in a talk she confided to Mr. Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, published at the time in al-Muqtataf; at its close she said: "I knew May in the bloom of

her youth and at the height of her activity; I

The editorship of "The Woman's Voice," while thanking all the women and men of letters who joined with it in preparing this issue, apologizes for being unable to publish the contri-butions that arrived late, or for which this issue had no room; it will see to their publication in coming issues.