for a time — and perhaps in which I shall live my whole time!

- 3 -

Or was it that she refused anyone at all, and would not let him go far in loving her? I do not know, I do not know. She bewilders me, this child!! That she should love Ahmad — that is understandable; but that she should not respond, like other girls, to the instinct of the female, and let everyone who loves her go on in his love, if only to gratify her natural vanity — this is what bewilders me and makes me ask myself: is she pure and upright to this degree? Does this kind of person still exist on this earth? I do not know, and I confess that I have failed to understand her; but I looked at her, when she said this to me, with something close to astonishment — though it was nearer to admiration than to astonishment...

"I shall be traveling a month after my brother's arrival, and I too shall be away for two years. I want to know from you: will you wait for me? Or might the waiting change you?"

"As for waiting, it will not change me — I who have waited all these years without hope. As for the promise, that is what I cannot give. A day and a night will not lessen my love for the absent one who will return. And so long as I love him, I shall promise you — or any creature — nothing whatsoever. He returns in fifteen days, and I confess

I fear him... or rather, I fear myself; for my love for him has not weakened to this day, nor has anything in it changed from its first moment, and I cannot picture myself belonging to anyone else... no, I cannot."

"Think it over for yourself, Samia. I shall not ask you for the answer now; I shall ask you to answer me after his return... On that day you will know how far you are able to give him up. And if your heart should incline, I am waiting... And I wish with all my heart that you may forget him, for he is married now, and love of him is a danger to you."

Then I left her, and added nothing more.

In the evening I saw my mother and asked her what my father had said. She told me he had received the news with a strange calm she had never known in him, and had said: "He is free; the deciding of his fate is in his own hands. It is he who will find happiness with her, and he who will find misery with her. God forgive him."

I did not wait for the morrow: I went and sped off a telegram to my brother, telling him to come, and to bring his wife, Madame Pauline.

October 5

Today my brother arrived. Everyone was joyful except me; even Samia herself seemed to have forgotten that he had mar-ried, and appeared in her prettiest

clothes, with her two braids pinned up high, to look older than she really was, so that Pauline would not see her as a child...

When we reached the airport, and Ahmad and his wife came down from the plane, everyone went up to greet them. Ahmad greeted them all; then, when he saw Samia, he looked at her a long while and said: "No, I shall not be able to lift you up and kiss you — you have become a very beautiful young lady..." Then he went on: "But who cares for the conventions! To me you will always be just as you were" — and he raised her in his arms and kissed her. He looked at Pauline and said: "This is my little imp of a child that I told you about." Pauline looked her over with a scrutinizing eye and, as though she believed that Samia really was a child, bent over her and kissed her.

How did she have the strength to appear as she did — a child who had never loved, never adored? I do not know how she managed to hide her feelings; her manner went back to what it had been a month before — she went back to skipping and playing as though nothing had happened... What astonished me even more was that she seemed to love my brother's wife: she stayed at her side all the way back from the air-port, telling her about everything we passed on the road, laughing and delighting — so much so