Salim Awad flung himself upon the green baize table; and so great was his despair that the coffee-cup of Khalil Khayyat jumped in its saucer. “I have suffered: I have lost at love,” he answered. “I have been wounded; I bleed copiously. I lie alone in a desert. My passion is hunger and thirst and a gaping wound. From fever and the night I cry out. Whence is my healing and satisfaction? Nay, but, Khalil, devoted friend,” he groaned, looking up, “I have known the ultimate sorrow. Haleema!” cried he, rising, hands clasped and uplifted, eyes looking far beyond the alien, cobwebbed, blackened ceiling of the little back room of Nageeb Fiani, the pastry-cook and greatest player in all the world. “Haleema!” he cried, as it may meanly be translated. “Haleema—my sleep and waking, night and day of my desiring soul, my thought and heart-throb! Haleema—gone forever from me, the poet, the unworthy, fled to the arms of the strong, the knowing, the manager of horses, the one powerful and controlling! Haleema—beautiful one, fashioned of God, star of the night of the sons of men, glory of the universe, appealing, of the soft arms, of the bosom of sleep! Haleema—of the finger-tips of healing, of the warm touch of solace, of the bed of rest! Haleema, beautiful one, beloved, lost to me!... Haleema!... Haleema!...” “God!” Khalil Khayyat ejaculated; “but this is indeed great poetry!” Salim Awad collapsed. “And from this,” asked Khalil Khayyat, cruel servant of art, being hopeful concerning the issue, “there has come a great poem? There _must_,” he muttered, “have come a love-song, a heart’s cry in comfort of such as have lost at love.” Salim Awad looked up from the table. “A cry of patient anguish,” said Khalil Khayyat. “Khalil,” said Salim Awad, solemnly, “the strings of my soul have been touched by the hand of the Spirit.” “By the Spirit?” “The fingers of Infinite Woe.” To this Khalil Khayyat made no reply, nor moved one muscle—save that his hand trembled a little, and his eyes, which had been steadfastly averted, suddenly searched the soul of Salim Awad. It was very still in the little back room. There was the sputtering of the gas, the tread of soft feet passing in haste to the kitchen, the clamor from the outer room, where common folk were gathered for their pleasure, but no sound, not so much as the drawing of breath, in the little room where these poets sat, and continued in this silence, until presently Khalil Khayyat drew very close to Salim Awad. “Salim,” he whispered, “reveal this poem.” “It cannot be uttered,” said Salim Awad. Khalil Khayyat was by this amazed. “Is it then so great?” he asked. “Then, Salim,” said he, “let it be as a jewel held in common by us of all the world.” “I am tempted!” “I plead, Salim—I, Khalil Khayyat, the poet, the philosopher—I plead!” “I may not share this great poem, Khalil,” said Salim Awad, commanding himself, “save with such as have suffered as I have suffered.”