a thing to stir pity, shaken by sobs; my mother mocked me, and eyes turned toward me because the box we were in faced the spectators' seats. Eleonor and Livia began to laugh at me, so I strove with myself and tried to think of cheerful things, and buried my reddened nose in the collar of my dress, while my tears fell, drop by drop, upon the green baize. And here my father comes to my rescue: he touches my shoulder lightly and says:
— Come close to me, here at the back of the box; the place is better than where you are.
I sit at his side, and his tenderness toward me deepens my emotion — that silent, watchful, unbidden tenderness; and I fall to thinking, as my small trembling hand is lost in his strong one, that he is the only person in the world who understands me, and a delicious warmth steals through me...
Then the actress Alma Rubens appeared on the screen, with her fugitive smile, her restless figure, her sorrowful, grieving mouth; and I wished I might become like her when I grew to be a young lady, and might have the fine beauty of her movement! But how could I, with my round face, full of health, so different from that pure oval face framed in that frame of beautiful black hair.
All through the picture my father kept patting my hand, while Alma Rubens suffered as she embraced an officer maimed in the war, and the music softly accompanied the scenes of gloom and sorrow, and my tears followed one another in great drops, and the spirit of art latent within me took body little by little.
*
"In Latin America there is a worship with three hypostases. They worship God, and wallow in His love, and surrender themselves to Him; the rest of the Christian lands may envy them a faith than which I have never seen any deeper, or more splendid, or one that clings closer to souls. And they worship woman... And they worship music — that lofty, exalted music; and you see them, while North America tries to invade them with the new music, that clamorous, brazen, wanton, sneering music, straining to repel it and clinging to the dearest of all their dead:
Verdi, and Beethoven, and Chopin, and Liszt, and Ravel, and all the
happy immortal company, which I do not doubt is playing today in one of the far-off worlds, pure and exalted."
*
Music!
And my father orders a violin for me.
Ah, how splendid the day they brought it to the house! My father had arranged for the lessons with Dona Mirtes, and I was waiting for
the instrument, and the bitter waiting was blowing my days to dust.
When the porter set the crate on the floor, I felt that a choir of angels surrounded me, blowing on their trumpets the anthem of victory.
— Little one! Do you want me to open the crate?
— Of course I want it.
What joy was mine when I heard the clatter of the crate's boards being pried off, board by
The Astonishing New Lipstick! — THO-RADIA
The astonishing new lipstick!
"COLLOIDAL 1301"
• This lipstick is so fine and so light that it makes the lips brilliant and alluring
Its automatic case is easy to use down to the very end; it glides on excellently
Tho-Radia
THO-RADIA
Ask for a box by way of trial
• A stick of day cream
• A stick of rich cream
• A bottle of nourishing cream
• Cases in four shades
• A booklet on how to care for your beauty
• Two sticks of Colloidal 1301 lipstick
You can also obtain it for 175 piasters from the shop where you usually buy, or from the distributing agents
Edouard Zakhia & Co.
Allenby Street — Beirut