and there were women; and they talked of everything and talked in different languages — in Arabic, French, and English especially — and sometimes they listened to a poem recited, or an essay read, or a piece of music played, or a song that pierced to the heart. I was granted the privilege of being among May's intimates, thanks to Mr. Lutfi al-Sayyid, and I would linger in the salon until the visitors departed. At that hour May would give herself over to us, and give herself over freely and generously, and we would hear of her conversation, her compositions, her playing, and her singing. It appears I shall never forget May's voice when she sang us a famous Lebanese song, "Ya Hanina," and sang to us in the different languages and in the different Arabic dialects as well!

As for the second aspect, it is the aspect of the May who preferred solitude and pressed seclusion upon herself. She went her way toward seclusion gently — or say she moved down that road by slow degrees at first, but by swift and insistent degrees at the last.

Her inclination toward seclusion began to show after she had lost her parents, and after grief had flooded her radiant soul. Yet her connection with people was not severed all at once; rather her meetings with them grew fewer, she avoided whatever occasioned such meetings, and she took to receiving people only by an appointment which they must request, the engagement books being consulted to fix it. And the engagement books grew stingier and stingier with such appointments, until meeting May was confined to her closest friends.

And these gatherings were, much of the time, bitter. For May was then in a phase of stinging grief, of gnawing pain, and of a pessimism that hastened to her as she hastened to it.

This seclusion which May pre-ferred at the end of her life did not confine its effect to May alone; people knew of this seclusion, and they knew what

pain May was enduring in it, and they thought about her and sought out all manner of explanations for it in May's mental life and in the literary ideals which May contemplated so much.

It may be strange to observe that May, with these two contradictory aspects of her life, was dealt a heedless law; and it is certain, too, that modern Arabic literature has profited and will profit from these two phases of May's life. God rest her soul.

4 — Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad

— What do you know of May's wariness in her social life?

— It seems to me that her exces-sive wariness accompanied her from the beginning of her youth, and then events made it more deeply rooted and more ramified, until at certain times she would trust no one, even the nearest of those closest to her. She was very often invited to

house parties given by her friends among the great families, and most of the time she would answer with an apology, because she disliked dancing parties in particular — despite her skill at dancing and her

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