.. This is the story "In the Flower of Youth," which we publish for a budding story-writer from Damascus. The story gives promise of a brilliant future, which we sincerely wish for its author, Mr. Adel Abu Shanab.

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She looks at him, dragging her feet along. Her father had said to her:

— Don't ride; come home on foot!

And she goes home without riding, and nothing can pluck from her mind her belief that she is wretched.. a poor thing, who has taken five liras as the wage of a night's work — and grinding work it is: smoke, drunken men, envious fellow performers.. and one sallow woman, her body the color of lemon peel.

And she turns toward him.. He came to her one night, drunk, and whispered something in her ear; perhaps he had read her resentment in the lines of her face. She said nothing, only smiled an anxious smile — though had she spoken, had she consented.. her colleague's belly would have spat forth quivering entrails, and the sallow, sharp-drawn body would have crashed to the floor, splitting open upon two lips full of black blood!

She never loved this work. She said to her father:

— I do not want to trade on my face.. on my legs!

And he did not listen.. He said:

— The boy needs "milk."

And she came to the stage.. she danced, and did not believe then that the audience would receive her with such enthusiasm; but with the days she came to understand that the customers are savages, who warm not to the dancer alone but to the singer too, if she has a soft skin and two beautiful legs.

And she glances at him over her shoulder. He said to her one night:

— Your colleague is jealous of you, and it is in my power to have her thrown out — to kill her. Shall I do it?

And she never loved him, for she would not have wished her colleague thrown out on her account.

She will fling away the five liras.. toss them into the corner of the room, where the boy lies raving.

— Has the boy eaten?

And the old father answers:

— I was waiting for you. My heart is with you.

And her heart, for its part, is with him; she loves him, and she yielded only to secure for him, and for her small brother thrown upon the bed of fever, food, and warmth, and tenderness.

And she looks once more to where the drunken fair-haired young man is. He walks.. he follows her always. She sees nothing in him to show that he shares with her, from afar, and in silence, the pain hoarded in her breast; and yet she warms to his attentions, warms to that evident elegance which fixes for him, in her mind, a large income, and standing.. and wealth.

And he smiles; she does not smile, but returns her head to its first position..

A fast car sweeps past her side, and a face goes by. Ah, the faces the eye glimpses in a flash — how they stir in the imagination many and varied memories.. How glad she was for the owner of that face, her friend, when she saw her in the long white gown, strutting in it before the women guests, awaiting the coming of the man who would never leave her all her life long.. Will she too marry, one wonders?

And the yellow face of her colleague springs upon her.. a face full of stories. She pictures how she borrowed from her, on the first night, the dancing dress.. She had wished, in truth, to have one like it, though she knew that the five liras she takes as her wage could never make her wish come true..

And she sets her head at a comfortable angle: why, she wonders, did her colleague afterward refuse to lend her the dancing dress? She never meant to do her

any harm; the whole of the matter is that men — so it seems — have a particular humor, by which they may so re-fashion the things they used to love that these suddenly appear dull and faded in their eyes.. One of them — so she understood — suddenly shouted:

— No, we don't want her.. we want the new one!