For long years I have feared this drawer of mine; years have passed since I closed it for the last time; for long years I have avoided opening it and seeing what is inside.

Yesterday — only yesterday — I felt a strong, insistent desire to open it, to rid myself of what is inside it, for time has effaced what is past! I have forgotten at last; I have been healed; I have recovered from you and from the memories.

I no longer strain my ears if someone mentions your name; I no longer keep away from the places we used to frequent together; my heart no longer leaps in my breast at hearing a voice that resembles yours. Everything is over; time has pardoned the past, and what was between us has ended.

And I felt a kind of ease! I felt a kind of delicious emptiness, a kind of slackening after long tension, a kind of dozing off after long wakefulness! I felt freed from the bondage of memories.

With a confident hand I approached the drawer today and opened it, and with an unmoved eye I saw what was inside, and I began turning over its contents until I came to the box... the box of memories. Yet my hand did not tremble, and my breathing did not quicken or grow troubled! I was cured.

I shall clean my drawer of what remains of you, as I cleaned my heart before.

Here are your first letters! How silly of me to have kept them! They are nothing but a few words: "How boring tonight's lecturer is!" Do you remember? We were listening to a lecture on

Hegel, and you were sitting near me; you caught me yawning, and then you wrote me that sentence. How stupid I was to have kept it!

And here is a handkerchief of yours! I was weeping as I watched the life of Marie Antoinette on the screen, and my handkerchief got soaked, so you handed me yours! By heaven, how innocent our friendship was!

And this is a button! From you, certainly! Perhaps from your shirt — but how did it stay with me? And why did I keep it? It was from you, and that was enough for me.

And here is the volume "You and I" by Paul Géraldy! You gave it to me, saying it was to make me love reading in French! You rogue! Was that really what you meant?

What possessed me to keep the wrapper of a "Baked" chocolate finger? Did you like them? Where did we eat that finger, that I should have kept this faded wrapper?

And this is a penknife of Jezzine make... few were those who bought them in those days. You left it for me on the day you went off to spend the holiday outside Beirut, with a little note on which you had written: "To make it easier to open my many letters during my absence! Beware of using your fingers, lest the enve-lope scratch them." How many letters of withered blue I opened with it! Time has done to them what it did to my memory — they have become pale and lifeless.

Do you remember this fountain pen? I received it from you with a bundle of yellow sheets, on the first of which you had written: "You no longer have any excuse for not answering my letters!" Do

you know? I never used this pen except to write to you!

And here is a bottle of the perfume "I Shall Return," nearly empty! It was the only perfume I used in those days! And this bottle was a gift from you the day you came back from your holiday! How I felt the longing for you, and how I turned around to look for you, whenever I caught that scent! It was our own air together!

And these are two tickets to a concert at West Hall at the American University! I remember your fury because I had bought them, and how you refused to go, so we sat silent in the anger of a quarrel! Oh, the pride of man and his vanity in you! At last you laughed at yourself for this power of yours, and we rose to go! I kept telling you that I too wished to contribute to our happiness in being together! I do not know what came over me then, but when we reached the University I no longer felt that desire to attend the concert! Do you remember how we laughed as we sat on a wooden bench under an old tree, watching the people hurrying so as not to miss the concert?

And this is a dried flower! I was walking with you in the garden and you picked it for me, and my fingers kept toying with it as you confessed your love to me! And when I returned to my room I put it inside the book "You and I" until it dried! Here are its petals dropping now as the years dropped away that parted me from the memory! What is the matter with my hand, that it trembles? Good Lord! What is coming over me now? Time has effaced what is past! Everything is over!