beside it a book,

"Value & Capital" by J. R. Hicks. Perhaps the lady of the house has a practice of reading this sort of intellectual book...

In the hall is a new portrait of His Excellency the President in a brown leather frame... and in the corner a small col-ored photograph, which I learned was a picture of Mrs. Zalfa's mother — and I understood at once the source of that refined fem-inine beauty in the First Lady of Lebanon!

My First Impressions of Her

At this moment Mrs. Zalfa comes in to us.. She enters like any other lady, with no aide or policeman going before her... and she orders coffee...

I train my eyes on her with reserve. I notice that she is natural and simple, and that her speech is a melodi-ous whisper without affec-tation.. Fair-haired, with delicate features; as for her eyes, they are of an artistic blue, like the color of our sea these days, or the color of the forget-me-not... And how strange that this lady should be the mother of two young men, and that she should keep this tall figure and this slen-der waist!!

And what more about her person? She is elegant — very elegant — she talks

with sweetness and fluency, for she knows what she wants to say and says it with complete frankness and simplicity!! Not once did she refer to her husband by anything other than plain "Camille," and I do not suppose she will ever speak of him as "His Excellency the President!"

... Colors of Her Childhood

If some glimpse of Mrs. Zalfa's childhood must be given, we would mention that she is the daughter of Nicolas Tabet, and that while still a dewy bud she was deprived of the wing of a tender mother; and her mother, an Englishwoman of old stock, was not like every mother, nor

was the loss of her like every loss... As for her childhood, it brims with painful memories and with tears... memories that turned the delicate, keenly sensitive child into a quiet girl who adored solitude, and who made up for a mother's affection now with reading, now with drawing... At an early age her father discovered that his child had genuine artistic gifts — her draw-ings and her handwork all foretold an early maturity and a notable innate taste; but there was no way to direct these gifts along the artistic path to which she aspired..

"The Madonna"

At the American School for Girls, where she received her education, "Zalfa Tabet" the stu-dent was a lovable, quiet, hardworking girl... They nicknamed her "the Madonna" for the beauty of her character and her person, and for that gentleness and purity in her eyes... She was not a flame of brilliance, nor at the head of her class; rather she had one quality that was hers alone: "to do everything in the best way possible"... And this qual-ity clings to her to this very day, for every task entrusted to her comes out from under her hand com-plete, beyond reproach.

This quality shows most of all in her home and in her family life. For, out of care for her own peace of

mind, she takes upon herself, and with the greatest relish, many of the household tasks that most ladies consider beneath them — scrubbing the tiles with brush and soap, polishing the copper pots, dusting... These essential matters

lived alongside Zalfa the young girl in her father's house, and alongside Zalfa

Zalfa Tabet as a child — or is she perhaps an angel from heaven?