said, and understanding, "Ah — a cup of coffee..."

He drank one cup, then another, paid the price, and went out walking toward the shore... It seemed to him that its clear blue was turning into a strangling blackness with two thin arms stretching out toward him, and a feeling took possession of him of loneliness and of separation from every living, moving thing; so he began to call back the images of friends and acquaintances and relations, and the images passed before him, meager and pale, walking behind her image — her image as she laughed and pulled her hair from the hand of the wind before she died...

Why should he not die? Why not throw his spent, weary body between the arms of this great blue? Why not breast the waves and walk into its belly, spreading the water for his bed, and sleep? And what is death but a long sleep untroubled by the dreams of the earth? He did not need to steel himself, since he was not afraid — it is the frightened man who resolves and steels himself — and he saw in the bottom of the sea a world of stillness and calm, a world of silent seclusion, empty of staring eyes and muttering lips... And he walked along the shore on the soft sand, taking from life a last handful of its air for himself, and raised his eyes to the sky, to where he would be going, and smiled with peace of mind, for the first time since he lost her... No, he was not afraid, but happy, trembling with longing for the unknown where she was...

And suddenly he started back and stood staring at something silent crouched upon the sand... It was another human being, talking to the sea — yes, another tormented soul, a young, handsome boy... He wanted to flee from him, and he wanted to bend over him to learn whether he was alive or dead... At last he bent down and touched his shoulder gently;

the boy turned and looked at him slowly, and the two gazes embraced — one despairing gaze embracing another; then the boy bowed his head and closed his eyes, and a tear came out from between his lids, small and faint, like a prisoner coming out from behind the bars of a prison...

He stretched his hand to the closed lids and wiped them; then he felt the disheveled black hair and pushed back a lock of it that shaded the forehead, and said, his voice like a whisper amid the roar: "What is it, my son? Has life struck you too?"

The crouched body shook first, then the boy burst out weeping; so he drew him to himself, and the poor boy cried out, asking:

"Is it cowardice, sir, to seek death? Is it shameful to flee from life? Yes — it struck me first in my homeland and my

father, there in Palestine, upon the sweet, holy soil; and it struck me here in my mother. But I was brave, sir — brave and patient. I buried my father and did not weep; I bade farewell to my soil and did not weep; I buried my mother and did not weep, despite the emptiness I thought would strangle me. And I stretched out my hand to life — I stretched out a soft, tender hand that asked for strength and hardness, the strength of a firm, solid man; but it failed me, sir, as the miser fails the feeble beggar. It abased me in people's contempt for me; it weakened me in the stubbornness of livelihood against me; it struck me in life's enmity toward me!

It does not want me and has no room for me — I, the destitute pauper living in a little patch of it, a cold, bare room, an open door to sickness... It has driven

Wonderline

Girdles and brassieres

Wonderline

Wonderline

The "3D" brassiere

Made especially to let you move freely and to show off your charms

Wonderline

Sold in Beirut at:

Kanzoui: Bab Idriss

Nubar: Souk al-Tawileh

Eureka: opposite the Municipality

Otraco: Souk Ayyas

In Tripoli: Victor Abboud