Your picture — I look at it and fall silent... Your eyes — I stare into them and ache... Is it true that you have gone and departed, as the winter sun departs, suddenly and without warning of its going?

My wife, my soul: you created me after I was grown; you made of me a mind that sees with keen, seeing eyes and a heart that feels with supple, steady fingers... People knew you as a devil overflowing with evil, scattering it over their good earth — and I knew you as an angel in whom light and goodness and strength lay hidden... If only they had seen you take my fevered head, that long night, between your palms and whisper encouragement to me with the gentlest

touch that ever brushed a human being... If only they had seen you, the hour I came back to you with hands empty of work, carrying my failure between them, as you looked at me with steadiness and love and said: "I do not call this failure; it is a small stone your foot stumbled on — and who among us does not stumble on stones!?" If only they had seen you laugh with gladness and shyness after the doctor's good news, pressing to your heart the pure dream of motherhood and setting it at the loftiest height of sanctity!

I never saw you a mother — ah, my grief! — I never saw you a shining face and gleaming eyes, carrying a little one as tenderly as ever a human being carried... And now I look at your eyes in a picture, and ache... When did I see those eyes for the first time? It was years ago, when I was a young student... I was coming home late, lagging behind my schoolfellows, when a small, angry voice struck my ear, rising through the stillness. I stopped, drew near the narrow lane hidden from sight, and stood looking. I saw your eyes blaze and flash, and heard you scream in anger: "Get away from me, you scoundrel, or I will kill you" — and your hand rose, slapping with force, restoring honor with fire. I ran to you, throwing my protection about you; the coward fled, and we were left alone, staring at each other... Yes, that was the first time I saw those eyes... Would that people had seen that too; would that they had seen you shaking with anger, wiping away tears

that broke loose in spite of you — you, the strong, the steadfast... Would that they had seen you bow your head afterward, murmur your thanks, and go your way, sad and wilted...

I saw you often after that; sometimes you would talk with me, and sometimes you passed by in silence... I learned from you that you worked and studied, that you were helping your mother in the struggle — the struggle for bread and for life... that you worked at the school for a paltry wage; and my admiration for you grew, and my attachment to your strength...

Then we would sit sometimes in the public gardens, eating little cakes you made for me with your own

hands; I laughed when you laughed, and my soul drank a deep contentment... Yes, I saw in you all the honor and firm-ness and beauty in the world...

After that I lost your shadow, and went searching for you like a madman every evening after school, and did not find you. My wits flew from me, and I ran to my mother and told her, weep-ing on her breast. She smiled and said: "Your first love? Oh, you will forget it soon." The blood boiled in my veins, and I

fell to telling her of your person; she knit her brows and patted my shoulder in consolation... And so that page was folded shut, sealed with a spot of blood from the first wound whose pain ever made me weep.

The years rolled on, and I finished my secondary studies; then my father's straitened means pressed harder still, and I could not continue. My parents' eyes went searching for a good wife for me, after my father had found me work in an office...

Once a friend of mine invited me to visit him, and whispered to me as we were walking to his house: "Pity the man who marries — and you will soon be pitiable yourself! I hate the fetter, my friend, and prisons." And when we reached the door of the house he whispered, winking: "I'll show you Jamila, the maid, whom I told you

of your work, of your pain, of your torment...

... After a brief absence, our friend Mrs. Noura Nowayhed Halawani returns to resume her literary activity for "The Woman's Voice."

We who prize in Mrs. Halawani her storyteller's gift are glad to present her in "Struggle" — the story of woman face to face with life! Here she is, stroking the stricken places of your soul with feeling, and opening its deepest sorrows...