ong them, and sang
melancholy melodies, making them delirious, fascinating them; and they
followed her round and round, in twines and twists and curves, with
arched heads and stiffened tails; and the chamber swam like an undulating
sea of shifting sapphire lit by the moon of midnight. Not before the moon
of midnight was in the sky ceased Bhanavar sporting with the serpents,
and she sank to sleep exhausted in their midst.

Such was the occupation of the Queen of Mashalleed when he came not to
her. The women and slaves of the palace dreaded her, and the King himself
was her very slave.

Meanwhile the plot of her unforgivingness against Aswarak ripened: and
the Vizier beholding the bride he had lost Queen of Mashalleed his
master, it was as she conceived, that his heart was eaten with jealousy
and fierce rage. Bhanavar as she came across him spake mildly, and gave
him gentle looks, sad glances, suffering not his fires to abate, the
torment of his love to cool. Each night he awoke with a serpent in his
bed; the beam of her beauty was as the constant bite of a serpent,
poisoning his blood, and he deluded his soul with the belief that
Bhanavar loved him notwithstanding, and that she was seized forcibly from
him by the King. 'Otherwise,' thought he, 'why loosed she not a serpent
from the host to strangle me even as yonder black slaves?' Bhanavar knew
the mind of Aswarak, and considered, 'The King is cunning and weak, a
slave to his desires, and in the bondage of the jewel, my beauty. The
Vizier is unscrupulous, a hatcher of intrigues; but that he dreads me and
hopes a favour of me, he would have wrought against me ere now. 'Tis then
a combat 'twixt him and me. O my soul, art thou dreaming of a fair youth
that was the bliss of thy bosom night and day, night and day? The Vizier
shall die!'

One morning, and it was a year from the day she had become Queen of
Mashalleed, Bhanavar sprang up quickly from the side of the King; and he
was gazing on her in amazement and loathing. She flew to her chamber,
chasing forth her women, and ran to a mirror. Therein she saw three lines
that were on her brow, lines of age, and at the corners of her mouth and
about her throat a slackness of skin, the skin no longer its soft rosy
white, but withered brown as leaves of the forest. She shrieked, and fell
back in a swoon of horror. When she recovered, she ran to the mirror
again, and it was the same sight. And she rose from swooning a third
time,