'Her slave prays for a word with the Marvel of the Age whose mind so lovely outshines even her fair face, and whose face so beautiful is the lamp that holds the light of her soul.'

'Warm for a woman!' said the Princess, and looked straight at the newcomer who stood salaaming with the utmost humility. She added impatiently:

"There is no need of this ceremony. Remove your veil. The good physician, Abul Qasim, is privileged to see the faces of all in the Palace of Queens.'

In a flash the veil was torn off and a man's face appeared beneath it, young, bold, and beautiful, with the hawk features of the Imperial House. A splendid, dissolute young man with the down on his upper lip like the black astride the swan's bill. Prince Suleiman, son of Dara, the Padshah's brother.

'Ha, daughter of my uncle!' he cried. 'Did I not wager, did I not swear that I would see the Hidden One? And now I see her, face to face. Poets have sung you, cousin, and painters have praised you, and their words and colors were lies, for you are wholly a spark of Divinity. And having seen, I entreat for love's very sake that your beauty may be mine to worship until time is no more.'

He made toward her eagerly, disregarding Imami and me. I looked to see her confused or angry, but she spoke with a most misleading calm.

'Exalted cousin, you have won your wager and your bride. If her embrace is cold it is at least constant and -'

'Cold, with those burning lips of rose, those eyes filled with sleep? O loveliest, divinest, grant me one kiss for earnest if you would not have me die at your feet.'

I saw her sign with her hand to Imami, who glided away, flattening herself against the wall as if terrified. Then she spoke serenely.

'Exalted cousin, when were you last in Shaitan pur?'

It stopped him like a lightning flash. He stood arrested on the marble before her face. 'I know nothing of Shaitanpur,' he said breathlessly.

'No? Nor of Peri Mahal, the dancer, and her house with the courtyard of roses and the song she sings?'

Again she caught up her lute and sang in a low voice:

'Black bee, strong bee, the honey-eater,

Plunder my perfume, seek my heart!
Cling to me, ravage me, make me sweeter!
Tear the leaves of the rose apart.'

He stared, his eyes slowly dilating. That the daughter of the Emperor should sing the song of the bazaar, the song of the light women! Then it emboldened him. He threw himself forward to seize her hand.

'Maker of verses, this is a rose of your own garden. Till now I never heard it, but it speaks your heart. You shall not ask me twice, my rose, my pearl, my star.' He caught the hem of her veil.

Now I knew well from her eyes that he rushed on his fate, but it was written in the book of his destiny and who can avert fate?

She drew back a little and looked at him with soft eyes, wells of delicious darkness. Her voice was gentle as moonbeams and caressing, so that a man might well believe she would give all to please him whom she exalted with the sight of her. Said I not that the Moon has a side, dark, cold, and perilous?

'Fortunate cousin, I am a weak woman. How dare I face the wrath of the Padshah? He does not love your father's son. But if he did She drooped her head as with a soft shame overwhelming her in the deeps of modesty. O very woman, divine, yet a child!

He, trembling, and with eyes fixed,

stammered out, 'Alas, I have dreamed of your sweetness, and what is the dream to the truth? Oh, make it mine that in life and death it may enfold me, and that I may never again behold a lesser light, having once seen the Ineffable.'

And very softly, like the breathing of a flute, she said, 'O my cousin, how should we face the wrath of the Padshah?' And he, kissing her hands with frenzy, said in broken words, 'Ah, Moon of my delight, that knows no wane, let me but watch with you through the starry hours of one night, and then, then, if the Padshah's will be to slay me, at least I shall have lived before I die.'

'And I also,' she said, looking down like the feminine incarnation of modesty, so that, enraptured, he kissed her on the mouth as a man in the desert grasps the cup nor can sever his lips from it. And when he would permit her to speak she leaned her head backward to gain space, and said, 'What is my lord's will; in what shall I obey him?'

Now I, standing half hidden in the marble recess, would have warned him if it had been possible, that not thus oh, not thus, does the proudest and wisest of women abandon herself to such as he. For I had pity on his manhood and the Imperial blood that he shared with her. But who was this suppliant to obstruct the design of the Princess? And indeed I became at last uncertain that I guessed her meaning, with such submissive sweetness did she take his hand in hers and touch it to her lovely brows. And trembling like a man in an ague, he replied:

'O darling little slave, since you give me the right to command what is wholly mine-I say this, let my slave, whose slave I am, expect me to-night when the moonlight touches the western corner of the Diwan-i-Am, and I shall come to the hidden chamber, and

my life, my soul, are in the hand of my slave whose feet I kiss.'

And throwing himself on the marble like a worshiper, he kissed the flowersoft feet that showed like bare gold beneath the hem of her robe, and so, rising to his knee, looked up at her as an idolater at his goddess.

But she looked beyond him at the curtain which veiled the door. It lifted and Imami stood there, ash-pale, with a dish of gold in her hand and standing thereon a great goblet of jeweled glass with rose-red sherbet of pomegranate juice brimming in it and rose petals floating on the surface, and beside it two golden cups flashing with diamond sparks, and on her knee she offered it to the Princess, who took the goblet and a cup, smiling.

'Fortunate cousin, since this is so, and I, my father's best-beloved child, shall pray him to grant me my heart's desire, let us drink the cup of betrothal in the presence of the Hakim Abul Qasim and the lady Imami. But I warn you that long and doubtful will be my suit and if a word too soon reach him my life will be the price. Heart of my heart, I pledge you.'

And setting the blossom of her lips to the cup she drank, and filled the other cup for him. Even as he set his lips to it, suddenly Imami sprang to her feet.

"The Padshah comes!' she said, and fell again on her knees, hiding her face in her hands.

IV

I saw the dreadful terror that struck the color from the face of the lover. He knelt there with a glassy countenance like a man in the clutch of a nightmare. But Glory of Women, herself shuddering, caught him by the hand.

"There is but one way from these rooms and the Emperor closes it. To the room beyond my bedchamber, the room of the marble bath, and hide

She pushed him from her and he fled. Then, most singular to see, she composed her veil, glancing in the mirror set in silver that was a gift from the Portuguese priests to the Emperor. The curtain lifted and Aurungzib Padshah entered and Imami prostrated herself and I also, but the Princess knelt.

Now I know not how this should be, but in a room where great events have just taken place it is as if the winds of passion beat about the walls and waft the garments of those who have shared them, and to my guilty heart it seemed as though the very lilies inlaid on the marble cried aloud, 'Majesty - Majesty, there is a man, a man in hiding!'

And certainly the Padshah halted and looked from one to the other of us with suspicion. He was ever a man of suspicion, narrow-browed, dry-lipped, sharp-eyed. The face of a man who sees not life as it is, but either as he hates or would have it whom truth mocks in escaping. Weak; but of all terrible things on earth, beware the strength of a weak man in the grip of his belief.

-

So, looking hard at the kneeling Glory of Women, he said coldly, 'In the name of the most Merciful and Beneficent, what is this disturbance? Speak, Princess, daughter of the family of chastity! It is revealed to this suppliant at the Throne of Allah that there is a hidden thing in these chambers. What is it?'

She answered, 'May joy attend my exalted father, the adorner of the gardens of happiness, the decorator of the rose-parterre of enjoyment. There is surely a hidden thing in these chambers: your unworthy daughter, who is known by your august favor as Makhfi, the Hidden One. And I have read aloud a poem newly completed which has moved the Hakim Abul Qasim to great delight since it dwells on the per

fections of the Giver who gives unasked.'

'It is well, sincere daughter. Presently we shall hear it.'

I saw his eyes fix on the golden dish that lay on the table with one cup emptied and a stream of the sherbet like a bloodstain on the marble below. "This was set down in haste,' he said through clipped lips.

'In haste, O Glory of Allah,' said the Princess with the cold sweat clamming the silken tendrils on her forehead. 'I drank, and was about to drink the second when your auspicious feet blessed the threshold.'

'You are thirsty, happy daughter of sovereignty? Then drink the remainder. Permission is granted.'

I saw the gleam in either black eye of him as he spoke, watching her sidelong. She lifted the cup to her lips with a hand that shook so that it rattled against her teeth, though she struggled to command herself.

'No, do not drink, royal daughter. It is stale,' he said, still smiling with his mouth but not his eyes.

And the Princess replied with terror scarcely to be hidden, 'Will not the Mirror of God be seated and partake of refreshments from the hand of his slave?'

'Willingly, but of that cup-no,' said the Padshah. And I knew his thought as if he had spoken it, and Imami crawled to the door like a thing released to fetch sherbet and fruits, and I to the latticed marble window, while the Emperor walked about the hall leaning on the shoulder of the Princess, and I marveled if Allah would support her lest she should fall and die at his feet.

He was later to attend the Am-Khas, the Hall of Audience, and was attired kingly. A chain of mighty pearls hung to his knees, and above all these jewels was his cold repelling dignity as of a King too great to be approached even

place for fire to heat the water, enclosed and fed with sweet-scented woods and balls of perfumed gums. And, O Allah, most merciful, there had the lady Imami set a light and within could be seen the brilliant blue flames crawling like snakes among the cedar wood. And releasing the Princess I stood like a graven image of terror, expecting that at any moment the Padshah would follow. She laid her hand on the silver, and amid the crackling of the flames she whispered like a dying woman, 'What is your duty, exalted cousin?'

And from within he answered in a voice-O most Compassionate, grant that never again may I hear the like! 'Silence. Yet because my love has loved me and I die for her, give me one word to carry with me to doom.'

So she fell on her knees as if before the Emperor. 'Keep silence if you love me, for honor is more than death. Yet take this with you. I love you, and for your sake no man shall kiss my lips. Only you are behind my veil forever.' And he answered, 'On my head and eyes.'

By her command I gave her water to drink and applied an essence to her nostrils, and she rose and once more laid her hand on the silver. Then we came away and, clinging to me, she whispered, 'God send he keep silence, for the Emperor has worse torment in store than even this.' And the Padshah called us and we returned to where he sat in calm content, and he motioned my Princess to a seat, saying, 'I would hear your verses of "The Lover." What is the fate of a lover? It is to be crucified for the world's pleasure.'

And taking the manuscript from the hand of Imami, she read aloud:

'Dust falls within the cup of Kaikhobad And King Jamshid.

Nor recks the world if they were sad or glad, Or what they did.

VOL. 134-NO. 4

But her voice died away and she sank fainting at the Padshah's feet.

'Lay the Princess on the divan, and let the lady Imami continue the reading,' he commanded, and so it was done. She lay there, for a time unconscious, death-white and still, and the trembling voice of Imami continued with words so sweet that they might have moved the heart of an image of stone, and the Padshah sat immovable, hearing and praising for how long I know not nor shall ever know.

And at last he rose and said graciously, 'May the tree of hereditary affection watered by this hour of converse grow in leaf and fruit and overshadow us with peace. Go, exalted daughter, bathe your angelic person and rest with a soul sunned in the favor of the Emperor.'

And he went, we attending him to the door and beyond, and returning, we carried the Princess like a dead woman from the dreadful place, and the fire beneath the great vessel was red and silent, and within was silence also.

Of the days that followed I do not write.