this, Miss?" "Thank you!"...
She asked me in Italian: "What language does your friend speak?" I answered her: "Lebanese." She understood "Japanese," and so she asked: "Are you Japanese, then?" — "Yes!!"
Here the stage of acquaintance and preliminaries ended, and Gibran and I became absorbed in drawing the beautiful young woman's body borne on the arms of angels, Gibran now thinking aloud, now humming: "O Gibran, what is this silence..." — while Rosetta looked now at my face and now at Gibran's, until drowsiness crept into her eyelids; she bowed her head a little and the locks of her hair hung down over her shoulders in a picture than which nothing could be more beautiful or more wonderful!
An atmosphere of awesome silence settled over us before this pure, virginal beauty, and like a flash of lightning the three-quarters of an hour appointed for the work came to an end and the time for rest arrived. Gibran asked Rosetta whether she wished to rest, and she answered lazily, without opening her eyes:
"Is there any rest greater than this rest? Go on with your work..."
And the two brushes strayed once more into the transparency and brilliance of the colors, drawing their inspiration from naked beauty amid pure, divine promptings. And Gibran, deep in thought, asked me, without turning his gaze from the gentle, reposing body:
"Ah! If my fingers obeyed my brain and my feelings, Gibran would work wonders!... What do you know, Youssef, about this girl?" "I met her yesterday at the academy, and her body pleased me. At the end of the session some of the artists came up to ask
her whether she was free the next day, and she kept shaking her head no. I had learned that she was Italian, so I came forward in my turn, placed a franc in her hand, and asked her in her own language whether she was free. Her eyes flashed and she answered: 'One day only' — perhaps she wanted to try it out — so I wrote your address for her..."
A little later Gibran said in his deep voice: "Who knows — perhaps this girl needs our help and our protection. Paris is full of dangers, especially for the lambs..."
Gibran at that stage of his life was under the influence of a certain state of mind that I used to call "Franciscan": his whole concern was the reform of the universe, the protection of the weak, and the expression of absolute humanity, chivalry, and gallantry...
The session ended, and Gibran paid Rosetta two and a half francs... for we had made it our custom to pay the fee by turns, and that day it was his turn!!
(In the next issue: the story of Rosetta and Rodin)
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