The time was late afternoon, the hour when a cup of tea tastes sweet, and sweet with it the talk of friends; then the tale comes, alluring in the garb of legend, and the distance of years only makes it the more wondrous, the more instructive!

I listened to the talk of two people who hold in my soul a special place — the loftiest that a human being can occupy in a human heart. I listened with something like reverence — and can one who hearkens to two great souls like the woman of letters Julia Dimashqiyah and the artist Youssef Howayek do otherwise than grow reverent, soaring in an ideal world he dreams of, and burns, despairing, without ever attaining it?

And like an arrow a thought struck me: what, I said, if I set down at once, from their talk, such excerpts as may be set down, and convey them faithfully to the readers of "The Woman's Voice"??

•

"... What are my most beautiful memories??"

Mrs. Dimashqiyah's answer to Howayek's question was not long in coming, for she is, as her habit always is, quick of wit and clear of mind, with a felicity of speech and a beauty of expression rarely granted even to the sound of body. And how astonishing her mastery, in this "shadow of a body" reclining wearily among the cushions!! Our interlocutor said:

"My most beautiful memories go back to the day I began to grasp the meaning of beauty and to value it at its true worth... We were summering at Sofar, and I once met two Iraqi gentlemen of the Kilani family asking after Badr Dimashqiyah. I answered them, 'He is my husband'; but the bewilderment of their glances, wavering between my dress and my hat, told me how far gone they were in doubting what I claimed!! Badr's arrival, however, rescued my position, and it ended in our all becoming acquainted

and, as courtesy required, in our moving over to their nearby house. In the house I was brought in to the harem, while, as usual, the men kept to themselves in the salon — and there I stood before two ladies in black veils and long, flowing gowns. At the first moment I felt a tightening of the chest and something like regret. What have I to do with these women, I said to myself; their eyes never leave my hat, and in their eyes a thousand questions?!

"At last God made it easy... and I found something to say, addressing my words to the comely lady:

— 'Do you read — I mean, do you peruse anything?' — and I feared I had offended her without meaning to. What if she were unlettered, and took my question as a taunt at her simplicity?

Her answer came deliberate and grave:

— Yes, I read. I am a subscriber to al-Mar'a al-Jadida, and I have a mind to get in touch with the management to have the summer numbers forwarded from Baghdad to Sofar.

— And what do you most love to read in al-Mar'a al-Jadida, I asked her?

— I love it all... I read it twice and three times over... and what pleases me most is, without question, the article 'To the Daughter of My Country' — and here, with the greatest enthusiasm, she began repeating by heart whole passages from my articles, while I strove hard to hold down my feeling and my joy at what I was hearing — until she asked me:

— Do you know the magazine, and do you know the lady who writes this section?

— I know her well!

— You know her well? And might it be granted me to make her acquaintance?

— Certainly!

— ... And is she a Muslim or a Christian?!