“I am but a child,” Khalil Khayyat declared, his voice, now lifted, betraying despair. “I dream in letters of fire: I write in shadows. In my heart is a flame: from the point of my pen flows darkness. I proclaim a revolution: I hear loud laughter and the noise of dice. Salim,” he cried, “I am but a little child: when night falls upon the labor of my day I remember the morning!” “Khalil!” Khalil Khayyat was thrilled by the quality of this invocation. “Khalil of the exalted mission, friend, poet, teacher of the aspiring,” Salim Awad whispered, leaning close to the ear of Khalil Khayyat, “a great thing has come to pass.” Khayyat commanded his ecstatic perturbation. “Hist!” Salim ejaculated. “Is there not one listening at the door?” “There is no one, Salim; it is the feet of Nageeb the coffee-boy, passing to the table of Abosamara, the merchant.” Salim hearkened. “There is no one, Salim.” “There is a breathing at the key-hole, Khalil,” Salim protested. “This great thing must not be known.” “There is no one, Salim,” said Khalil Khayyat. “I have heard Abosamara call these seven times. Being rich, he is brutal to such as serve. The sound is of the feet of the little Intelligent One. He bears coffee to the impatient merchant. His feet are soft, by my training; they pass like a whisper.... Salim, what is this great thing?” “Nay, but, Khalil, I hesitate: the thing must not be heard.” “Even so,” said Khalil Khayyat, contemptuously, being still a poet; “the people are of the muck of the world; they are common, they are not of our blood and learning. How shall they understand that which they hear?” “Khalil,” Salim Awad answered, reassured, “I have known a great moment!” “A great moment?” said Khalil Khayyat, being both old and wise. “Then it is because of agony. There has issued from this great pain,” said he, edging, in his artistic excitement, toward the victim of the muse, “a divine poem of love?” Salim Awad sighed. “Is it not so, Salim?”