Mistress Rose only stopped speaking when the door opened and a slender young man with a handsome face came in. A magical light shone from his eyes and a slight smile was on his lips. Mistress Rose stood and took his arm with complete affection. She introduced him to me, mentioning my name courteously and his name with a significant look. Thus I knew that he was the youth for whom she had renounced the world and defied laws and conventions.

We sat down in silence, for each of us wished to ascertain what the other thought of him. A minute passed, a minute filled with that silence which turns souls toward the heavenly hosts. I looked at them sitting next to each other and saw something that I had not seen before. In a glance I understood the meaning of the story of Mistress Rose. I apprehended the mystery of her rejection of a social order that condemns those who rebel against its laws before it investigates the reasons for their rebellion. Before me I saw a single celestial spirit in two bodies, handsome in their youth and clothed in union. The god of love stood between them, spreading his wings to shelter them from people’s criticism and censure. I found total mutual understanding shining from two luminous faces made bright by sincerity, bathed in purity. For the first time in my life, I saw the vision of happiness raised between a man and a woman who had been repudiated by religion and driven out by the law.

After a moment I stood up and bade them farewell. Without my speaking, the degree to which my soul had been stirred was apparent to them. I left that humble house, a house that emotions had made a temple of love and affection. As I walked among the palaces and estates whose secrets Mistress Rose had revealed to me, I pondered her conversation and all the beginnings and endings entwined within it. But before I reached the boundary of that quarter, I remembered Rasheed Bey Nu’man and saw once more the agony of his despair and unhappiness. I thought, “He is a wronged and wretched man, but does heaven hear him if he stands before it wronged and complaining of Rose al-Hani? Did that woman sin against him when she left him and followed her own freedom? Or was he the one who sinned against her when he subjugated her body by marriage before her spirit inclined itself toward love? Which of the two is the wrongdoer and which the one wronged? Which would you say is guilty and which innocent?”