ns, a vision of
loveliness, with queenly brows, closed red lips, and large full black
eyes; her hair black, and on it a net of amber strung with pearls. To
look upon her was to feel the tyranny of love, love's pangs of alarm and
hope and anguish; and she was dressed in a dress of white silk, threaded
with gold and sapphire, showing in shadowy beams her rounded figure and
the stateliness that was hers. So she ran to her brothers and embraced
them, calling them by their names, catching their hands, caressing them
as one that had been long parted from them. Then, seeing Shibli Bagarag
as he stood transfixed with the javelins of loveliness that flew from her
on all sides, she cried: 'What, O Master of the Event! halt thou nought
for the Sword but to gaze before thee in silliness?'

Then he said, 'O rare in beauty! marvel of Aklis and the world! surely
the paradise of eyes is thy figure and the glory of thy face!'

But she shouted, 'To work with the Sword! Shame on thee! is there not
one, a bright one, a miracle in faithfulness, that awaiteth thy rescue on
the pillar?'

And she repeated the praises he had spoken of Noorna bin Noorka, his
betrothed. Then he grasped the Sword firmly, remembering the love of
Noorna, and crying, 'Lead me from this, O ye sons of Aklis, and thou,
Princess Gulrevaz, lead me, that I may come to her.'

So they said, 'Follow us!' and he sheathed the Sword in his girdle with
the word 'Sleep!' and followed them, his heart beating violently.

KOOROOKH

Now, they sped from the Cave of Chrysolites by another passage than that
by which they entered it, and nothing but the light of the Sword to guide
them. By that light Shibli Bagarag could distinguish glimmering shapes,
silent and statue-like, to the right and the left of them, their visages
hidden in a veil of heavy webs; and he saw what seemed in the dusk broad
halls, halls of council, and again black pools and black groves, and
columns of crowded porticoes,--all signs of an underground kingdom. They
came to some steps and mounted these severally, coming to a platform, in
the middle of which leapt a fountain, the top spray of it touched with a
beam of earth and the air breathed by men. Here he heard the youths
dabble with the dark waters, and he discerned Gulrevaz tossing it in her
two hands, calling, 'Koorookh! Koorookh!' Then they said to him, 'Stir
this fountain with the Sword, O Master of the Event!' So he stirred the
fountain, and the who