They smiled, turning to each other, and said, ’We live innocently, we harm no one, what should we fear?’

During the night of that day Bhanavar awoke and kissed the Prince; and lo! he shuddered in his sleep as with the grave-cold.  A second time she was awakened on the breast of Almeryl by a dream of the Serpents of the Lake Karatis—­the lake of the Jewel; and she stood up, and there was in the street a hum of voices, and she saw there before the house armed men with naked steel in their hands.  Scarce had she called Almeryl to her, when the outer door of their house was forced, and she shrieked to him, ’’Tis thou they come for:  fly, O my Prince, my husband! the way of the garden is clear.’

But he said sadly, ’Nay, what am I? it is thou they would win from me.  I’ll leave thee not in this life.’

So she cried, ’O my soul, then together!—­but I shall hinder thee, and be a burden to thy flight.’

And she called on the All-powerful for aid, and ran with him into the garden of the house, and lo! by the water side at the end of the garden a boat full of armed soldiers with scimitars.  So these fell upon them, and bound them, and haled them into the house again, where was the dark Vizier Aswarak, and certain officers of the night watch with a force.  The Vizier cried when he saw them, ’I accuse thee, Prince Almeryl, of being here in the city of our lord the King, to conspire against him and his authority.’

Almeryl faced the Vizier firmly, and replied, ’I knew not in my life I had made an enemy; but there is one here who telleth that of me.’

The Vizier frowned, saying, ’Thou deniest this?  And thou here, and thy father at war with the sovereignty of our lord the King!’

Almeryl beheld his danger, and he said, ‘Is this so?’

Then cried the Vizier, ‘Hear him! is not that a fair simulation?’ So he called to the guard, ‘Shackle him!’ When that was done, he ordered the house to be sacked, and the women and the slaves he divided for a spoil, but he reserved Bhanavar to himself:  and lo! twice she burst away from them that held her to hang upon the lips of Almeryl, and twice was she torn from him as a grape-bunch is torn from the streaming vine, and the third time she swooned and the anguish of life left her.

Now, Bhanavar was borne to the harem of the Vizier, and for days she suffered no morsel of food to enter her mouth, and was dying, had not the Vizier in the cunning of his dissimulation fed her with distant glimpses of Almeryl, to show her he yet lived.  Then she thought, ’While my beloved liveth, life is due to me’; and she ate and drank and reassumed her fair fulness and the queenliness that was hers; but the Vizier had no love of her, and respected her, considering in his mind, ’Time will exhaust the fury of this tigress, and she is a fruit worth the waiting for.  Wullahy!  I shall have possessed her ere the days of over-ripening.’