plainly: I love you more than ever children loved their mothers.

She could feel that her mother was weeping; and she

was weeping too.

But each of them spared no pains to hide her tears from the other.

And there came a night...

A night she could not but face.

The unsuspecting little one woke to strong breaths — screaming breaths, one hard upon another.

By the pale light of the moon she saw her mother's two eyes, bewildered, yearning.

She clasped her, gasping, and with a scorching madness fell to holding her tighter and tighter...

But the mother said not one word, for she had already surrendered to a long swoon; her fair lashes had fallen in a startled trembling.

And soft strands of her golden hair lay scattered over the white, luminous brow, and over the marble neck whose veins leapt violently with the beating of the dying heart.

A shudder took the little one...

Should she knock at the door? Should she call the household?! — No... surely not...

Let her leave this adored one at rest, at ease in this swoon, in which she fancied her floating in a crystal world, draped in loose-flowing flowers, this world left behind her as though she had never once passed through it: without regret and without reproach—

And can anyone turn aside what has been decreed to be?

After the doctors had washed their hands of this incurable disease, which clung to the young woman without mercy ever taking hold of it?

Tears swam over the little one's face, as thoughts swam through her quick, sorrowing imagination.

And she held fast to the two yellowed hands, wishing she could breathe life into them with her own burning breath.

And the two hands convulsed, congested, burned; yet the little one would not be turned from clinging to them, nor cease for one moment to kiss them...

And here is that anguished memory coming back upon her, violent and clanging, every time.

And here are her own hands.

Yes, her hands — the soft white ones — convulsing, turning blue, burning, until she fancies she is afraid to look at them; and she hides them behind her back, and under the pillow, and among the folds of the quilt, and can hardly find ease.

And she goes off into a fit of mute weeping, wrestling with herself, quieting the tumult of her griefs, lulling her pent-up feelings.

And before long she withdraws to her icy bed, then out of the stifling room, to breathe a little of the open air.

And there she would meet the aunt — Ilham — that rare kinswoman, risen for her prayers in the night; and the aunt would greet her, wondering, with much gentleness and a little of an admirer's chiding, and would ask her, pressingly:

— would she allow her to say her prayers in her room, so that she might have her company for comfort?

And there, in her room — yes... the aunt would pass a portion of the night in keeping her company, in spinning out merry talk to ease her wounded soul.

And so there began to come back to the little one some assurance that there are in life people whose souls never cease to be pure, because they weigh life in the scales of the spirit, not in the scales of matter...

And so the trust between our little one and her aunt passed back and forth and doubled and redoubled,

until the two answered one another in a wonderful harmony—

if it was not love, or fellow-feeling, or familiarity... then it was that precious metal which heredity had poured into the depths of the family's soil, meeting now and again in two persons far apart in their impressions, their feelings, and their leanings.

And yet one particular point drew them together.

And on the foundation of this firm trust the little one learned religion, and clung to it; she prayed with Aunt Ilham, and worshipped to her heart's content.

And she came to know love in its noblest meanings, and kept it clear of small things and trifles.

And she made upright character good in many of her affairs; she never once put it to use for gain, and never once mocked it. And she learned the worth of womanliness, and turned away from all that would disgrace it.

And she knew the worth of learning, and drank deep from its springs — and thirsts wearily still. And she learned philosophy... and argued with the philosophizing aunt, and debated, and doubted, and then settled into faith at the hands of the wondrous Ilham.

And she knew — yes, she knew at last, at the very last: that illiteracy cannot hide a blazing intelligence, and that learning adds nothing to the flame of that intelligence.

It is, in itself, no more than general knowledge, and the widening of narrow horizons.

And that is why, when she was bereaved of her by death, after a stretch of life the two had passed together, she wrote upon her aunt's grave:

(Here lies the first illiterate woman of letters.)