I did not sleep that night, thinking of my first day at the college. By the time eight o'clock drew near and the hour of the first assembly came, four hours had passed since my rising, in which I had never ceased moving from one place to another and from one question to the next, until I felt my strength had failed me from the very start of the day. So I thanked God for the interval of quiet we had been promised, and climbed the stairs heavily to where I found the girls had preceded me to their seats.

The hall is spacious, almost bare of furniture, except for the piano and the picture of the Gioconda on the wall facing the entrance, and drooping curtains that fall over the great glass front and soften the sharpness of the sun's rays, while casting upon the walls shadows of their bright orange color.

I felt the pleasure of warmth in an elegant atmos-phere — for all its simplicity — and when the direc-tress stood up to give her talk, a delicate smile upon her lips, I saw that she was a part of this place which unites simplicity and elegance. I fell to contemplating her poised stance, her bare arms, her trim dress, and to wondering how this woman, given over to learning and teaching, had remained withal a woman who attends to her outward appearance and preserves its grace. Absorbed in my own thoughts, I did not listen to what she was saying, until my ear was struck, in the course of her talk, by a remark that roused my attention: "When one of you coats her face with powder, let her choose the suitable shade... let her apply it with sound taste, a light dusting that does not take away the freshness of the face. And let her hold her mirror to the light, so that she may see the color of her face at close range, and see the powder distributed evenly over her face and her neck..."

I left the hall stumbling over the trains of disappointment, as though I had committed a fault by listening to a talk in which mirror and powders were mentioned. And when I spoke to Nada — she was a year ahead of me on the ladder of university study — of what was running through my mind, she raised her eyebrows and said, laughing: "And what crime is there in that? Do we not talk of these matters among ourselves? Why then should we not discuss them openly, in a talk intended for guidance? You are here to rid yourself of your old traditions, which deny frankness and prefer secretiveness and

circumlocution. It is as if you believed that addresses can treat only of ideal, fanciful subjects with grand titles, and may not condescend to discuss the reality we live in, which is worthier of study than fancy."

In the evening we gathered for a party of merriment and acquaintance, which made us forget for a while what we had heard the whole day long of information about how we should study, how we should use the library, how we must conduct ourselves, and how to choose the subject of our specialization.

And when my companion and I entered the bedroom of modern dimensions, we had nothing to talk of but that historic evening, in which we had come in touch with girl students from different circles and races, gathered under one roof by the pursuit of learning.

Loris — the third of us in the room — began to describe the students she had come to know, and to compare the representatives of certain neighboring countries in bearing and in accent. As for Nada, she had been drawn to the Western elements in the company of students: that Turkish girl with the flowing hair and the musical voice, and those newly come from Germany and Russia, carrying to the East strange opinions on the philosophy of living. As for me, I declared that I had been occupied with comparing the girls who represent different regions of our small homeland, which we know only by means of maps crowded with lines and short on clarity. And I launched into a description of my impressions, claiming that the daughters of the North are marked by heads held high as their mountains; they speak in a stately accent abounding in full, raised vowels, and in their speech is force and stubbornness — the stubbornness, no doubt, of the rocks from which they descend. Quite opposite are the daughters of the South, low of voice and of glance, like the hills in which the western range comes to its end. As for the daughters of the middle regions, their temper stands midway between North and South...

I wanted to go on with the description when Nada cut me short, saying: "There you are, back in your fanciful world that I warned you against this morning.

Where did you get this social philosophy? Is it the child of your imagination, or the fruit of your stray readings? But..." she said, raising her finger in challenge: "I would have you be frank enough to deliver these views to them face to face... Do you