mother the moment I finished telling my story? Her face lit up and she came toward me, exclaiming:

— My son! Twenty years have passed since you all parted from us, yet I have not forgotten that I suckled you with milk from this very breast, only one year before the days divided us. A firm friendship joined our two houses after our fathers had been neighbors through the long years; and when you were a child in your second year, you were still taking your mother's milk despite that age of yours — for you came into the light, my son, after ten years had passed upon your parents' marriage, and for that your mother vowed to nurse you at her breast three full years. And at the end of your second year I gave birth to my daughter — and your mother looked toward you, and I felt the earth reel beneath my feet from the shock of the surprise. And she went on completing her tale without sensing what had befallen me:

— From this breast of mine I quenched your thirst the day your mother left you in my keeping and went out to see to some affairs of hers. Amal was in the fifth month of her age, and you were at the beginning of your third year. So the days parted you as infants, only to bring you together again grown. Shake your brother's hand, Amal — and you, Shawkat: my heart stirred toward you from the moment I caught sight of you, and my instinct did not err, for I am your second mother, and this breast has a claim upon you. — And

she asked me about my mother, and I told her that she was in Egypt visiting her family and that I would write to tell her of the reunion. When you placed your hand in mine, both hands were cold as ice; your mother looked at us with joy filling her heart, while my ears were deafened by the cackling of brutal fate, standing there to mock me; and with my naked eye I saw all my dreams and hopes turned to ashes tossed about by the raging winds.

I bade you all farewell that night, leaving behind me my soul and my whole being... God curse those false traditions! What right had my mother to make that vow of hers, and with it to seal my end? Perdition take that hour, and God curse those false desires. I did not sleep that night until the first gleams of morning announced the passing of one day of my life — nay, of my life entire. And my messenger came to me, as usual, and told me that you had spent the days just past sleepless and sobbing, cursing fate, now that you had become my sister. There was a meeting between us that stretched into hours, at whose end I bade you farewell in the hope that we should never meet again — for so God had willed, and there is no turning back His will. Yet I did not cease visiting your house after that, lest I stir your mother's suspicions. And on one of my evening visits your mother came

to consult me about a young man who had come