Thereat, Luloo wept afresh, and cried, ’Ah, cruel! and ’tis a sweet thought for thee, and thou’lt have no mind for me, tossing on my hateful lonely couch.’

Tenderly Noorna eyed Luloo, and the sprinkles of the bath fell with the tears of both, and they clung together, and were like the lily and its bud on one stalk in a shower.  Then, when Noorna had spent her affection, she said, ’O thou of the long downward lashes, thy love was constant when I stood under a curse and was an old woman—­a hag!  Carest thou so little to learn the name of him that claimeth me?’

Luloo replied, ’I thought of no one save myself and my loss, O my lost pearl; happy is he, a youth of favour.  Oh, how I shall hate him that taketh thee from me.  Tell me now his name, O sovereign of hearts!’

So Noorna smoothed the curves and corners of her mouth and calmed her countenance, crying in a deep tone and a voice as of reverence, ‘Shagpat!’

Now, at that name Luloo drank in her breath and was awed, and sank in herself, and had just words to ask, ’Hath he demanded thee again in marriage, O my mistress?’

Said Noorna, ‘Even so.’

Luloo muttered, ‘Great is the Dispenser of our fates!’

And she spake no further, but sighed and took napkins and summoned the slave-girls, and arrayed Noorna silently in the robe of blue and bridal ornaments.  Then Noorna said to them that thronged about her, ’Put on, each of ye, a robe of white, ye that are maidens, and a fillet of blue, and a sash of saffron, and abide my coming.’

And she said to Luloo, ’Array thyself in a robe of blue, even as mine, and let trinkets lurk in thy tresses, and abide my coming.’

Then went she forth from them, and veiled her head and swathed her figure in raiment of a coarse white stuff, and was as the moon going behind a hill of dusky snow; and she left the house, and passed along the streets and by the palaces, till she came to the palace of her father, now filled by Shagpat.  Before the palace grouped a great concourse and a multitude of all ages and either sex in that city, despite the blaze and the heat.  Like roaring of a sea beyond the mountains was the noise that issued from them, and their eyes were a fire of beams against the portal of the palace.  Now, she saw in the crowd one Shafrac, a shoemaker, and addressed. him, saying, ’O Shafrac, the shoemaker, what’s this assembly and how got together? for the poet says: 

         “Ye string not such assemblies in the street,
          Save when some high Event should be complete."’

He answered, ’’Tis an Event complete.  Wullahy! the deputation from Shiraz to Shagpat, and the submission of that vain city to the might of Shagpat.’  And he asked her, jestingly, ’Art thou a witch, to guess that, O veiled and virtuous one?’

Quoth she, ’I read the thing that cometh ere ’tis come, and I read danger to Shagpat in this deputation from Shiraz, and this dish of pomegranate grain.’