At night she was alone — always alone — taking shelter in a modest room in one of the quarters of Beirut. She would lock its door from within and open it to no living soul!

In the morning — before feet and wheels grew thick — she would take her way to Sitt Nour's workshop in the capital, wait there for the sweeping-woman and help her set its things and implements in order, and begin work before the coming of the working girls.

Her eye was on her work — if questioned, she answered with gravity and precision, and she asked nothing unless her need of an answer pressed her to it.

And in the Beirut evening — turbulent and teeming, clashing and surging with goers and comers, spilling into the cafés and taverns, crowding at the doors of the talking-picture houses — she would cross that roaring sea to her room without a wave striking her, or a breeze stirring her, or a spatter of mud clinging to her shoes.

Her name was Najwa. Eighteen years of age. Her face dark and sunburnt, with a certain attractiveness and an ordinary beauty.

"Poor Najwa," her compan-ions would say, "she would have done better to be a nun in a convent!"

— And he — was a poet known in literary circles, working as a writer on one

of Beirut's papers, at a salary that assured him clothing and food. He was one of the youths of the surging sidewalks; a band of his comrades would gather round him when he left his work, and they their work and their schools, and off they would roam and frolic... their wanderings ending, most often, at the showing of a new film.

And how often they stood on the sidewalks to sift the girls passing by.

"This one is sweet — and this one comes with a big dowry — and that one's figure is like a lance — and that one is dark and the other fair..."

And if it chanced of an evening that Najwa passed — that worker in the making of hats — the poet's comrades would turn to him — they would turn to the pole of their circle, and one of them would say with swagger:

"We are picking out this girl for you as a sweetheart."

And another would say — seeing that she paid heed to no one: But she is difficult, it would seem.

And another would say, when she vanished without her eye straying from her path: This girl might be a nun!

His way ran past the workshop — he saluted its door morning and evening every day

with a mechanical glance which, by force of habit, knew its way to two eyes within, which the onlookers scarcely sensed turning toward the door at the hours of going and coming.

And Sitt Nour — the owner of the workshop — would sit on a velvet seat, before a gleaming table, beside the entrance... Many a time she caught the straying glances of a young man, but she could not find her way to the target they struck.

"My life, how handsome he is," she said in some deep place within herself. And she asked about the lean, dark, attractive one, but not one of the girls of her establishment knew him. One of them said:

"We see him at times with a band of his friends on the road."

And another said in a ban-tering tone: Ask Najwa, madam; ask the nun — she knows more of the matter than all of us.

Then Sitt Nour turned to the girl absorbed in her work and asked her with disdain: Do you know him, Najwa?

And the nun of the workshop answered — answered with a word no one expected:

Yes! I know him, madam. He is a poet and a writer, and an editor on one of Beirut's papers. And her cheeks flushed as she finished, saying: And he is also our neighbor in the quarter.

At which a devil of a girl said: If Najwa does not know him, then which of the girls would you have know him?

He passed by the next day, and drew the eyes of the working girls — all but Najwa's.

And the owner of the work-