"How beautiful this morning is!" Zahra breathed the phrase to herself as she looked out of her bedroom window over the green pine grove, where colors and boughs rippled with the flicker of sunbeams and the play of the breeze, the rustling of the leaves answering the intoxicating scent of the pines.

"Summer in the mountains is a perpetual spring," said the girl, feeling spring steal through her body... See — she could glimpse a strange sparkle in her own eyes, and in her features a lift and an openness... as though there were in her voice a melody and a warmth that made its sound sweet to her hearing, so that she almost spoke to herself aloud.

Was it true that she had become beautiful, or had this mountain air lent her a new charm? She did not doubt it, for wherever she walked she saw eyes turned upon her, stirring a wave of admiration all around her. And she was made still more certain of it by what she had noticed in her neighbor at the hotel: a wish to talk with her and an inclination to pay her compliments.

She had known this young man for some years — from a scouting excursion the graduating class of her school had made, in the company of the leader, to the outskirts of the Cedars, where the girls stayed four days. It happened that a number of young boy scouts were camping nearby, and twice they came over to the girls' camp

to help them pitch the tents and tie the ropes. Among them was this youth, whose name, she learned, was Issam, and who was one of the troop's leaders.

Beyond that she remembered nothing about him except two intensely black eyes; but for those, she would not have known him when she met him at the hotel six years later. Her companion Sana said to her: — He showed great delight at coming upon you here. As though he had stumbled on a lost treasure. — That is strange. I hardly know him. — He is most charming, and his eyes are winning. — But he is short. — Is

his companion an old scout too? — No, but they are bosom friends. The other one is a teacher of geography and science, devoted to study and reading, and preparing for the law degree by private study. Issam is a sports instructor in a number of schools. For all the difference in their inclinations, they have been inseparable friends since boyhood, and they are so still.

Then the two girls sank into their own private thoughts. Zahra and Sana, too, had been inseparable companions since their early years, despite the difference in inclination and in age. She —