Then she said, ’Thy voice is friendly with me, O Ruark! and thou scornest not the creature that I am.  Counsel me as to my dealing with the Jewel.’

Surely the eyes of the Chief met the eyes of Bhanavar as when the brightest stars of midnight are doubled in a clear dark lake, and he sang in measured music: 

         ’Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending? 
     Stay under that tall palm-tree through the night;
          Rest on the mountain-slope
          By the couching antelope,
     O thou enthroned supremacy of light! 
        And for ever the lustre thou art lending,
     Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,—­
          Silvery leaps and falls. 
          Hang by the mountain walls,
     Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
        For a danger and dolour is thy wending!

And, O Bhanavar, Bhanavar the Beautiful! shall I counsel thee, moon of loveliness,—­bright, full, perfect moon!—­counsel thee not to ascend and be seen and worshipped of men, sitting above them in majesty, thou that art thyself the Jewel beyond price?  Wah!  What if thou cast it from thee?—­thy beauty remaineth!’

And Bhanavar smote her palms in the moonlight, and exclaimed, ’How then shall I escape this in me, which is a curse to them that approach me?’

And he replied: 

Long we the less for the pearl of the sea
Because in its depths there ’s the death we flee? 
Long we the less, the less, woe’s me! 
Because thou art deathly,—­the less for thee?

She sang aloud among the rocks and the caves and the illumined waters: 

Destiny!  Destiny! why am I so dark? 
I that have beauty and love to be fair. 
Destiny!  Destiny! am I but a spark
Track’d under heaven in flames and despair? 
Destiny!  Destiny! why am I desired
Thus like a poisonous fruit, deadly sweet? 
Destiny!  Destiny! lo, my soul is tired,
Make me thy plaything no more, I entreat!

Ruark laughed low, and said, ’What is this dread of Rukrooth my mother which weigheth on thee but silliness!  For she saw thee willing to do well by her; and thou with thy Jewel, O Bhanavar, do thou but well by thyself, and there will be no woman such as thou in power and excellence of endowments, as there is nowhere one such as thou in beauty.’  Then he sighed to her, ‘Dare I look up to thee, O my Queen of Serpents?’ And he breathed as one that is losing breath, and the words came from him, ‘My soul is thine!’

When she heard him say this, great trouble was on the damsel, for his voice was not the voice of Zurvan her betrothed; and she remembered the sorrow of Rukrooth.  She would have fled from him, but a dread of the displeasure of the Chief restrained her, knowing Ruark a soul of wrath.  Her eyelids dropped and the Chief gazed on her eagerly, and sang in a passion of praises of her; the fires of his love had a tongue, his speech was a torrent of flame at the feet of the damsel.  And Bhanavar exclaimed, ’Oh, what am I, what am I, who have slain my love, my lover!—­ that one should love me and call on me for love?  My life is a long weeping for him!  Death is my wooer!’