To her who placed a veil between us and herself, and withdrew, building out of her solitude a fence around herself, depriving us of her great heart... to her I present "Tears and Roses"...

I returned with a trembling heart, waiting to see her after four years spent abroad... I returned with anxious eyes that wanted to see in reality what they had seen in dreams... I had left her a child more than a young woman; she was like a bud clothed in dew, beautiful as the morning, of whom I dreamed waking and sleeping, whom I sensed in silence and reverence, imagining her growing and opening into a dazzling, captivating beauty...

On the second day after my arrival I visited her father at his office, and he received me warmly, asking and answering, laughing and welcoming; and I almost lost my composure as I caught at his words, waiting for the one phrase I wanted to hear, when he said with a smile:

"I think your little friend 'Nana' will be very pleased with you, for all the height at which she carries her nose these days"...

I laughed and said with feigned calm:

"I have never known her to be haughty, and I will not believe that she is!"

He laughed out loud, then exclaimed, shaking me playfully by the shoulder:

"What a happy, lucky fellow you are! Tonight we celebrate her seventeenth birthday, and your coming will be the biggest surprise for her! Eight o'clock in the evening — don't forget"...

In the evening I stood at the iron gate, catching my quick, hurrying breaths as I watched the house ablaze with lights, my hand in my pocket toying with the gold bracelet studded with pearls, my gift to her after four years... I walked over the soft gravel toward the light and the music, and on entering found myself standing between her parents, greeting her mother, taken by the sincerity of her welcome, charmed by the gentleness of her words. Then they

left me to move alone through a crowd of guests, women and men, searching for her face among the faces... I did not find her, and shyness overcame me as I saw the eyes staring at me with strangeness and curiosity, so I took a corner near the band of musicians and set about examining the faces anew...

The music rang out, and bodies streamed past me like sea waves onto the dance floor — and then I saw her... It was she, Nana, wearing a dress the color of jasmine, on her breast a rose the color of blood, her beautiful black hair dancing on her bare back, waving and winding... Her lips rivaled the rose in redness and artistry... and her eyes were like the night when it floods the earth and hides all that is on it... "Nana," I cried in a whisper, to her and to myself, as I walked slowly toward the floor... I threaded my way among the dancers and reached her breathless, cutting off her partner's path... I held out my hand to her, silent, waiting; her arms went slack and she stopped dancing, looking at me with a mixture of bewilderment and displeasure... I said, smiling:

"Raji." Her eyes flashed for a moment; then she smiled coquettishly, raising her arms to me, and I circled her small waist with my trembling hand, and she said, laughing:

"When did you come back? And what is this happy surprise?!! Tell me — how do you find me?" I said: "I see you as a rose that has opened from that beautiful bud!"...

She laughed out loud, throwing her head back. Then my eye was caught by the immodesty of her dress, baring her neck and part of her bosom, and I felt jealousy gnawing at my heart as I pictured the greedy eyes devouring her beauty without shame or reckoning! And as if she sensed what I felt, she said with haughty coolness:

"Don't you like this dress of mine? Papa chose it for me himself"...

My head spun as I imagined her father looking at her admiringly, unaware of how little that dress he