“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.”