... Around one o'clock after midnight I was in bed, as was my habit, reading and drawing, when there came a knock at the door... nay, three knocks, followed by three knocks more... That is Miss Rosina's knock, I said to myself; can it possibly be she, coming at this hour?! I sprang from my bed, stumbling blindly, went down the stairs to the door, and opened it — and there I was, face to face with Rosina! Yellow as a statue of wax, and trembling to the soles of her feet with emotion and cold... She came forward — a mass of grief and exhaustion — threw herself upon the divan, covered her face with both hands, and burst into a fit of violent weeping...

I left her to weep and cool her burning heart, and went off to light the gas to make a cup of coffee, the

best sedative for her troubled nerves... After a few moments, as she sipped her coffee slowly and stared before her with wandering mind, I asked her: "Come, tell me the story now from its beginning to its end..." She answered in a choked voice, still trembling and biting her lip to hold back her tears:

"They threw me out! They beat me! They threatened to kill me!... And were it not for my hope in you, sir, and my trust that I should find with you a safe refuge, I would be at the bottom of the Seine this moment... Ah, would that I had never come to Paris!"

And she went back to weeping and wiping away tears, and I went back to soothing her spirits... She told me that her brothers, who at first used to forbid her to go out at night, had taken to drinking wine and to demanding of her a thing — death is lighter than its shame — demanding that she sell herself like the daughters of the night! And she implored me, saying:

"Mercy, sir. Take pity on me and help me return to my country. I have no one but you... God reward you." And she bent over my hand, but I drew it away before she could kiss it, and chided her, trying the while to hide a tear that forced its way to my eye... in grief over the state of this poor girl...

I calmed her agitation, saying: "Set

your mind at rest, my dear; in forty-eight hours you shall be among your people in Anticoli!"

— "Is what you say true, sir?" she said, laughing and crying at once! "I was not wrong to turn with all my hopes to you and to no one else!"

— "What you need now is a little rest," I said, "so that tomorrow you will be strong for the journey. I shall hand you the blanket; wrap yourself up in it and sleep your fill. And if you are hungry, there is the box of biscuits and the jam... over there on the table."

I climbed up to the loft where my bedding was, and threw down to Rosina the blanket — the only cover I owned — and she wrapped herself in it up over her head, for in truth she was half dead with cold and exhaustion... As for me, I took all the clothes and woolen things I possessed and strewed them over myself... I tried to read as I ordinarily do, but understood not one word. Then I put out the light, and there hovered in my head sweet memories of a debate that had so often flared up between me and Gibran on the relation of man to woman, and the nature of that relation...

On these memories I dozed off... and woke with the first glimmer of dawn. I came down slowly and lit the gas apparatus to make the coffee... and turned toward Rosina and found her sleeping the sleep of a child... A lock of her golden hair — the hair Gibran loved — had strayed up above the