The Legend of the Seventh Virgin

When one grows older one learns that happiness—complete and unadulterated happiness—comes only in moments, and must be recognized and savored to the full, for even in the happiest life, the complete joy is not always present.

So, Kerensa, you should never regret any experience, good or evil; for there's some good in what's bad just as there be bad in good...

Why should this happen to me when I planned and worked… and came so far?

Sometimes I sit at my window looking out on the towers of the Abbas and weep silently. No one must know how I suffered. No one must know how I failed. Sometimes I go and stand in the ring of stones and it seems to me that my fate is more wretched then theirs. They were turned to stone while they were dancing defiance. I wish I could have been.

Did it really happen as the legend said? Did they in truth dance here? Were they struck down in their defiance and turned to stone, to stand on this spot as the centuries passed? How fortunate they were! Sudden death was preferable to a lingering one. I thought of the seventh – the one who had been dragged to the hollow wall, the one who was shut in to die; and I was filled with a momentary melancholy.

In spite of my efforts I could not free myself. He caught me to me and I felt his teeth against mine. I kept mine firmly clenched and I hated him. I hated him so fiercely that I found a certain pleasure in my hatred. In that moment he had aroused an emotion in me that I had never felt before. It was not without desire. Perhaps, I thought later when I was alone and trying to analyze my feelings, the desire I felt was for a house, for a different station of life then that into which I had been born, for a fulfillment of a dream. My desire for these things was so fierce that perhaps another kind of desire could be aroused by anyone who could give me them; and his words about marriage had put an idea into my mind.

He could see I meant what I said, and was temporarily defeated. He walked past me and into the corridor; his eyes were angry and malevolent. I was horrified because I realized that he really believed I would have become his mistress that night.

I asked her to teach me, too, but she said it was something you taught yourself by keeping your eyes and ears open, and learning about people — for human nature was the same all the world over; there was so much bad in the good and so much good in the bad, that it was all a matter of weighing up how much good or bad had been allotted to each one.