We continue the publication of this series by our dear departed Jihan — and oh, the pity of fate, which did not grant her even part of a year more to complete the story of her life in this luxuriant style!

In this installment she speaks of a period from the beginning of her school days — she is in a convent of nuns.

— Sister Madeleine —

With the fresh morning, its steps trembling over the shad-ows of night,

with the bells of the street sweepers,

with the women carrying their tins of yogurt, in their loose, trailing skirts,

she would appear at the school, hurrying like the phantoms of longing, light as a stray-ing dream.

And the school would still be

yawning to the tones of the boarding-section bells, its door locked with a bolt as heavy as the pounding of her heart as she entered.

No sooner was it flung wide open before her than she bounded across it,

as though rousing her lazy age-mates with this won-drous energy, the like of which her school had never known before.

But she herself knew that what kindled it was her appointment — one she could never once break — with the nun, "Sœur Madeleine," her favorite nun, on every morning of bright Thursday.

That young nun, Palestinian

by origin, with the warm accent, the deep voice, and the sweet, merry glance which she would try to make stern and scarcely ever succeed;

that nun with the firm gait, resembling — like no one else's — the walk of queens with glittering crowns, of whom she had read so often in history and in legend;

that nun who knew no sound reason for this early coming, but who knew that this girl — stubborn to the point of haughtiness, pious in character to the point of

obsession — was of a rare weave; she did not know exactly whether she approved of it or found it strange... but in the depths of her truthful soul, which had never learned evasion, she felt a warm response to it, as though it were admiration for this thing she had never touched before...

And our girl stands there, in the sprawling playground, beneath that great peach tree whose branches spread like proud palm fronds.

She stands waiting, thinking. She glimpses life renewing itself with the day in every corner of the institute, and feels her own being renewed as it never was before. And she breathes in life with that brimming air, filling her two weak lungs, and feels as though this fragrance were carrying health to her —

this dewy, daring fragrance, which alone is strong enough to enter the nun's

room, where it sees her kneel-ing there before the Crucified One, praying, begging forgiveness, gazing at him with her faithful eyes — humble, trembling looks... begging forgiveness.

Trembling? Begging forgiveness?! And why the one, and why the other?!

Whoever begs forgiveness has doubtless sinned. But this nun of ours could not commit any offense — God forbid that sin should ever

tread her spotless ground.

She works the whole day long, and no small part of the night; she works with unbroken diligence — because the Mother Superior, on account of her personal competence, entrusts her with more than one responsibility — and so she knows no weariness, and no faintness of soul ever creeps into her.

All this without her knowing that she is