I feel in your heart the sting of sorrow and hear the cry of what is to come, and on your cheeks the flame of tears that despair wrestles between the ribs. Ali Mahmoud Taha

She lived in a world vast with hopes, glittering with the lights of high station, mingled with the glow of merriment and gladness — yet she was nothing but a wretched girl whom fate had drowned in a basin of destinies...

She had begun to hide her streaming tears behind a laughing curtain from which wafted the odor of shame; but that noxious odor spread only within the folds of her tormented soul, touching her delicate nerves with its fiery fingertips, so that she suffered from it, and her strength gave way, and she fell headlong onto a couch that stood nearby.

She was a reckless girl, harsh in her judgments upon society's worn-out traditions; so she paid no heed to anyone who might see her in the company of Jamil in the public parks and at dancing parties. She had loved him by force of neighborhood, and he loved her out of desire — the fact being that she was a beautiful girl, gentle in company, a captivator of hearts, lissome of figure, lofty of feeling; her radiant face was crowned by two wide eyes green as the leaves of the trees, upon which love bestowed its great luster!

When she loved Jamil she thought that happiness had become her rightful possession, a handful in the palm of her hand; she lavished her tenderness upon his miserable soul whenever she felt despair

casting its griefs upon her being, and its hard shackles upon her weary nerves.

The poor girl was building the beam of hope out of clouds of fancy, that she might become Jamil's lawful wife, if only for a single second of her dark life — though she knew that Jamil's heart was not hers alone, but was portioned out among the hearts of the girls who had fallen victim to his cunning and prey to his treachery. But there was a certain seductive

girl who, with her unerring weapon and her tempting ways, was able to capture Jamil's heart, beguiling it with cunning and treachery while bearing, in their stead, the buds of true love. That was Watfa, who entered into the snare of their love in a strange fashion, whose phantoms Ghada found it beyond her power to dispel, or to quench their bursting forth into existence.

Surging jealousy settled into the folds of her soul and set the

membrane of her heart aflame, until she became a fiery girl, blazing up time after time.

But... but what could she do in the face of her rival Watfa, who had defiled friendship and demolished its very elements? Should she tell Jamil romantic tales about Watfa, spun from her own imagination, that he might recoil from her, and keep away from her, and remain hers alone?

No — she would never commit a sinful act to torment her conscience, nor would she stoop to anything base that would testify to meanness in her. For a woman's soul is the mirror of her heart, shining white, which holds within its walls, for mankind, the noblest of dealings and the most generous of intentions.

Virginal fancies and thoughts turned in her head, and the raging waves tossed her to and fro, until her eyes came to rest upon the lines of the invitation card by which she was bidden to the wedding of her beloved Jamil to her rival Watfa.

Poor Ghada! The arrows had shattered her heart, and left the fire to devour the nest of her hope. Her senses awoke suddenly to the claws of jealousy tearing at her heart, "while the voice of reality branded her with humiliation and disgrace."

Amid all these upheavals and colliding storms in her mind, the poor girl could do nothing but accept her rival's invitation to

her wedding celebration to Jamil... that man without whom she had vowed to herself never to live.

Here now the wedding day arrived, and here was Ghada