Bhanavar chilled a moment, and looked on the faces of the women present, and they were staring at her, the younger ones tittering, and among them Nashta, whom she hated.  So she cried, ‘Away with ye!’ But the King commanded them, ‘Stay!’ Then the Queen leaned to him, saying, ’I will speak with my lord alone’; whereat he shrank from her, and spat.  Ice and flame shivered through the blood of Bhanavar, yet such was her eagerness to give the kiss to Mashalleed, that she leaned to him, still wooing him to her with smiles.  Then the King seized her violently, and flung her over the marble floor to the very basin of the fountain, and the crown that was on her brow fell and rolled to the feet of Nashta.  The girl lifted it, laughing, and was in the act of fitting it to her fair head amid the chuckles of her companions, when a slap from the hand of Bhanavar spun her twice round, and she dropped to the marble insensible.  The King bellowed in wrath, and ran to Nashta, crying to the Queen, ‘Surrender that crown to her, foul hag!’ But Bhanavar had bent over the basin of the fountain, and beheld the image of her change therein, and was hurrying from the hall and down the corridors of the palace to the private chamber.  So he made bare the steel by his side, and followed her with a number of the harem guard, menacing her, and commanding her to surrender the crown with the Jewel.  Ere she could lay hand on a veil, he was beside her, and she was encompassed.  In that extremity Bhanavar plucked the Jewel from her crown, and rubbed it, calling the Serpents to her.  One came, one only, and that one would not move from her to sling himself about the neck of Mashalleed, but whirled round her, hissing: 

        Every hour a serpent dies,
        Till we have the sacrifice: 
        Sweeten, sweeten, with thy kiss,
        Quick! a soul for Karatis.

Surely the King bit his breath, marvelling, and his fury became an awful fear, and he fell back from her, molesting her no further.  Then she squeezed the serpent till his body writhed in knots, and veiled herself, and sprang down a secret passage to the garden, and it was the time of the rising of the moon.  Coolness and soothingness dropped on her as a balm from the great light, and she gazed on it murmuring, as in a memory: 

     Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending? 
     Stay under that dark 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!