— Rebirth —

It fell to this little lonely one — soft of down, broken of wing, a giant in thought...

It fell to her to live however it might chance, because living was decreed for her — alas — and because in that, so it seems, there was a rightness she could not but take the side of, whether she would or no.

She had to live her life whatever hardship and contriving it cost her soul; and she had likewise to prepare herself for this life with

the preparation of one bent upon a matter that must be carried through.

Casting off what lay in her budding mind of the sediment of catastrophe upon catastrophe, taking shelter in the oasis of her aunt — Ilham — who had drawn her, ever since she was an infant at the crawl —

with her unmistakable smiles —

as a hen's chicks take shelter under their mother's warm wings. And she would not have given her this utmost trust had she not admired beyond measure her spirit — rebellious, ceaselessly astir, filled with abounding tenderness—

that tenderness she carried for every creature that stirs and creeps upon the earth, so that her heart, for all its smallness, seemed to have room for the world and all

that is in it. That is why she saw her forever brimming in spirit with whatever experience came her way, unstinting in energy to receive those values that no one heeds, though she knew beforehand that their results might not always be positive. For she believed, for example, that beauty — all beauty — lies in a person's giving without taking;

and that perfection, in its entirety, is a surpassing faith in one all-powerful Creator; and that the truth beyond all dispute is that you should allow yourself no more peace and happiness than you can allow to others;

and that goodness lies in doing it without holding it up as a favor even to yourself, to gratify your own selfishness;

and that love is a hymn without beginning or end, which cannot sink to what is low;

and that peace lies in a man's carrying his heart upon his palm, to offer it as good bread on whose crumbs the hungry may live.

— Yes, she took refuge in that shaded oasis, resting in it with some measure of ease.

But her personal regard — laid upon her by her moral nature and her peaceable upbringing, with all their influences and impressions — none of that would step aside, for one minute, from these impressions of her young girlhood.

The two were forever in give and take, in ceaseless

dispute, never settling and never calling a truce—

as appears in that pessimism which had scarcely left her soul a little while before it returned, showing itself in its strongest and most violent, most indignant forms. And when at last, after long effort, strained nerves, and a weary surrender, it was granted her to grow calm, our little one fled into a long stillness — long as

the growling nights of winter — and groped, in the dark of the frost-nipped evenings, for that beloved bed which stood two or three steps from her own, to throw herself heavily upon it, weeping all that choked weeping allowed, taking refuge in the memories of childhood — 'her happy childhood' — as far as stretching memory would carry her,

until, if she chanced to cast a passing glance at her hands, she felt them convulsing, congesting, burning... exactly like her mother's hands when she lay under the seizure of her death agony — and she at her side, alone,

We shall continue, in installments, to publish this series, honoring in the writer who has just departed from us her lofty style, and affirming that one who held a pen such as this pen of Jihan's — how should death have the power to fold it away and blot out its name... God rest our writer Jihan!