his imploring mother... The storm abated; after a while the sighs grew still, when he had settled into a calm and whole-some sleep; and the martyred mother appeared like Raphael's "Sistine Madonna"... with all its beauty of expression and purity of color, with the roundnesses of womanhood, the wakefulness of the features, the surgings of feeling, and the surrender to God.

But happiness gave her no long respite before our straining ears caught a key turning in the lock! The maid motioned us to hide ourselves in the adjoining room — her own — and I was at a loss how we should get out of this trap without scratching the neighborly friendship between my family and Hiyam's husband. Then I stilled my fright and quieted my caution. The father fell to examining the little one with the doctor he had brought, and they found him well on the way to recovery! What a happy surprise — how the searing

fever had left him, and the glad tidings of health unfurled their banner beside the banner of peace spread over the earth on that tranquil night! If only the two men had known that the tokens of his precious recovery had been wet with the burning dew of motherhood, whose antidote had overflowed onto his fevered body from the blaze of her chilled heart!

And it was as though her presence in the house that night moved the husband to unburden himself to his friend the doctor. The two men drew apart into a corner of the sickroom, and the two women pressed their ears to the wood, listening to the story as he told it for the first time — the story of his parting from Hiyam. He said:

"I was fiercely jealous and monstrously selfish; I imagined love to be domination, fetters, obedience. I strove to rule her heart, and asked myself why she did not rule mine and pen me within the narrow of her inmost

self — me alone and no other among all mankind — that she might drink deep of the springs of my gushing, toiling love! This conduct of mine would fill her now with hurt and pain; now again her merry spirit would get the better of her, and she would pass to and fro between me and our many friends in innocent amusements. I know today that she was innocent, my friend; but in those days a madness seized me whenever she favored anyone with a smile, driving my thoughts to the threshold of the great betrayal. Until one night she insisted on going to a dance. I refused; then I let her go with some friends, and kept to the house, feigning a slight indisposition.

"Toward midnight I slipped into the dance hall in disguise. It was a masked ball; and I went circling among the dancers until I came upon Hiyam, turning in the arms of the doctor who had presided at Fouad's birth! What I saw was enough for