So one day as I leaned from my casement looking on the garden seaward, I saw a strange red and yellow-feathered bird that flew to the branch of a citron-tree opposite, with a ring in its beak; and the bird was singing, and with every note the ring dropped from its bill, and it descended swiftly in an arrowy slant downward, and seized it ere it reached the ground, and commenced singing afresh.  When I had marked this to happen many times, I thought, ’How like is this bird to an innocent soul possessed of magic and using its powers!  Lo, it seeketh still to sing as one of the careless, and cannot relinquish the ring and be as the careless, and between the two there is neither peace for it nor pleasure.’  Now, while my eyes were on the pretty bird, dwelling on it, I saw it struck suddenly by an arrow beneath the left wing, and the bird fluttered to my bosom and dropped in it the ring from its beak.  Then it sprang weakly, and sought to fly and soar, and fluttered; but a blue film lodged over its eyes, and its panting was quickly ended.  So I looked at the ring and knew it for that one I had noted on the finger of Goorelka.  Red blushed my bliss, and ’twas revealed to me that the bird was of the birds of the Princess that had escaped from her with the ring.  I buried the bird, weeping for it, and flew to my books, and as I read a glow stole over me.  O my betrothed, eyes of my soul!  I read that the possessor of that ring was mistress of the marvellous hair which is a magnet to the homage of men, so that they crowd and crush and hunger to adore it, even the Identical!  This was the power that peopled the aviary of Goorelka, and had well-nigh conquered all the resistance of my craft.

Now, while I read there arose a hubbub and noise in the outer court, and shrieks of slaves.  The noise approached with rapid strides, and before I could close my books Goorelka burst in upon me, crying, ‘Noorna!  Noorna!’ Wild and haggard was her head, and she rushed to my books and saw them open at the sign of the ring:  then began our combat.  She menaced me as never mortal was menaced.  Rapid lightning-flashes were her transformations, and she was a serpent, a scorpion, a lizard, a lioness in succession, but I leapt perpetually into fresh rings of fire and of witched water; and at the fiftieth transformation, she fell on the floor exhausted, a shuddering heap.  Seeing that, I ran from her to the aviary in her palace, and hurried over a story of men to the birds, that rocked them on their perches with chestquakes of irresistible laughter.  Then flew I back to the Princess, and she still puffing on the floor, commenced wheedling and begging the ring of me, stinting no promises.  At last she cried, ’Girl! what is this ring to thee without beauty?  Thy beauty is in my keeping.’

And I exclaimed, ‘How? how?’ smitten to the soul.

She answered, ’Yea; and I can wear it as my own, adding it to my own, when thou’rt a hag!’