And Noorna bin Noorka answered, ’Surely, O Queen Rabesqurat, the haven of our voyage was Aklis, and we feared delay, seeing the fire of the mountain ablaze with expectations of us.’

Then the Queen cried angrily, ’’Tis well thou hadst wit to close the shell, O Noorna, or there would have been delay indeed.  Say, is not the road to Aklis through my palace?  And it is the road thousands travel.’

So Noorna bin Noorka said, ’O Queen, this do they; but are they of them that reach Aklis?’

And the Queen cried violently, purpling with passion, ’This to me! when I helped ye to the plucking of the Lily?’

Now, the Queen muttered an imprecation, and called the name ‘Abarak!’ and lo, a door opened in one of the pillars of jasper leading from the throne, and there came forth a little man, humped, with legs like bows, and arms reaching to his feet; in his hand a net weighted with leaden weights.  So the Queen levelled her finger at Noorna, and he spun the net above her head, and dropped it on her shoulder, and dragged her with him to the pillar.  When Shibli Bagarag saw that, the world darkened to him, and he rushed upon Abarak; but Noorna called swiftly in his ear, ’Wait! wait!  Thou by thy spells art stronger than all here save Abarak.  Be true!  Remember the seventh pillar!’ Then, with a spurn from the hand of Abarak, the youth fell back senseless at the feet of the Queen.

Now, with the return of consciousness his hearing was bewitched with strange delicious melodies, the touch of stringed instruments, and others breathed into softly as by the breath of love, delicate, tender, alive with enamoured bashfulness.  Surely, the soul that heard them dissolved like a sweet in the goblet, mingling with so much ecstasy of sound; and those melodies filling the white cave of the ear were even at once to drown the soul in delightfulness and buoy it with bliss, as a heavy-leaved flower is withered and refreshed by sun and dews.  Surely, the youth ceased not to listen, and oblivion of cares and aught other in this life, save that hidden luting and piping, pillowed his drowsy head.  At last there was a pause, and it seemed every maze of music had been wandered through.  Opening his eyes hurriedly, as with the loss of the music his own breath had gone likewise, he beheld a garden golden with the light of lamps hung profusely from branches and twigs of trees by the glowing cheeks of fruits, apple and grape, pomegranate and quince; and he was reclining on a bank piled with purple cushions, his limbs clad in the richest figured silks, fringed like the ends of clouds round the sun, with amber fringes.  He started up, striving to recall the confused memory of his adventures and what evil had befallen him, and he would have struggled with the vision of these glories, but it mastered him with the strength of a potent drug, so that the very name of his betrothed was forgotten by him, and he knew not whither he would, or the thing he wished for.  Now, when he had risen from the soft green bank that was his couch, lo, at his feet a damsel weeping!  So he lifted her by the hand, and she arose and looked at him, and began plaining of love and its tyrannies, softening him, already softened.  Then said she, ’What I suffer there is another, lovelier than I, suffering; thou the cause of it, O cruel youth!’