money from his friends, until he had twenty thousand francs in hand; one morning he laid them on the mantelpiece with a letter of farewell, left her the house, and took refuge in my rooms.
At three o'clock in the afternoon there came a knock at the door. I went to open it, and there she stood before me, scarcely able to master her fury and agitation. I was confounded; she came in; he saw her from a distance and rose to his feet; she came straight up to him and flung down at his feet the envelope with the banknotes inside, and said, with a noble bearing and in curt speech: "There is your money. I have no need of it." She was then livid of face and distraught of mind, ripe for any folly; and he likewise was dark of countenance and choking with anger, ripe for any violence. He asked her: "What do you want?" She said: "I will not have you treat me as you would treat a harlot. You pleaded with me until I gave myself into your keeping; I ask nothing but that you keep me with you."
He stamped his foot upon the floor and said, beside himself:
"No — this is too much. If you imagine that you..." I pulled him by the hand and said to him: "Let me manage this, Jean." Then I went up to her and set about breaking down her anger with everything the mind suggests in such a case, while she listened to me straining, staring, silent, unbending. When my quiver was empty and things stood as bad as ever, I had recourse to the last of stratagems and said: "He loves you still, my little one; but his family wishes him to marry, and you understand...!" A violent shudder ran through her and she said:
"Ah...! Ah! Now I understand!" Then she turned to him and said: "You mean to marry?" He answered with harshness and decision:
"Yes." She took a step toward him and said: "If you marry, I will kill myself. Do you hear?"
He shrugged his shoulders and said: "Very well — kill yourself!" She brought out a word or two, throttled by a deadly anguish: "You say?.. you say?.. you say?.. Say it again!" He repeated: "Kill yourself, if that pleases you!" She said, her pallor deepening and her condition growing worse: "I need no daring from you. I shall throw myself from the window." Jean laughed with all his might, walked to the window and opened it; then he saluted and bowed, like a man who wishes to yield another precedence in walking, and said: "There is the way! After you!" She fixed her bewildered, darting gaze upon it for an instant; then she gathered herself like one about to leap a hedge in a field, passed in front of him and in front of me to the window — and vanished!
Never, so long as I live, shall I forget the impression that open window made upon me, with that body just fallen through it! In
that instant it seemed to me as wide as the sky and as empty as space. I shrank backward, not daring to look, as though I feared I should fall myself. Jean stood stupefied, unable to move or to look. People came running and carried in the girl, both her legs broken; she never walked upon her feet again from that day. Her lover, his breast drenched by the stings of conscience, his soul shaken by the girl's devotion, took her to himself and married her.
That, my dear fellow, is the story of that husband and wife. And evening was coming on, and the young wife wished to go back for fear of the cold; so the servant began pushing the crippled woman's carriage toward the village, and the painter walked at his wife's side — and a full hour had passed over them in which no tongue addressed tongue and no glance answered glance.
Misr Airlines
Every day to Cairo — every Thursday to Aleppo
Every Monday to Naples and Geneva
Aboard
the Flying Iwan
the newest, most luxurious, and fastest aircraft of
Misr Airlines
Connections with all parts of the world, and especially to Venezuela and Australia
For all information and travel tickets apply to the agents:
Hitti Bros.
Beirut — Star Square — al-Maarad
Telephone: 52/17 and 76/75
Tripoli: Khair al-Din Awad and Ibrahim al-Sayegh
and all recognized travel offices
Damascus — al-Nasr Street — Telephone: 13270 and 13271