woman of wiles! thou
serpent! but I'll be gone from here.'

So she faltered in sweetness, knowing him doomed, and loving to dally
with him in her wickedness, 'Indeed if thou cam'st not for my kiss--'

Then said the Vizier, 'Yet a further guile! Was't not an outrage to bring
me here?'

She faltered again, leaning the fair length of her limbs on a couch,
''Tis ill that we are not alone, else could these lips convince thee
well: else indeed!'

And the Vizier cried, 'Chase then these intruders from us, O thou
sorceress, and above all serpents in power! for thou poisonest with a
touch; and the eye and the ear alike take in thy poisons greedily. Thou
overcomest the senses, the reason, the judgment; yea, vindictiveness,
wrath, suspicions; leading the soul captive with a breath of thine, as
'twere a breeze from the gardens of bliss.'

Bhanavar changed her manner a little, lisping, 'And why that starting
from the tomb of a dead harmless youth? And that abuse of me?'

He peered at her inquiringly, echoing 'Why?'

And she repeated, as a child might repeat it, 'Why that?'

Then the Vizier smote his forehead in the madness of utter perplexity,
changing his eye from Bhanavar to the tomb of Almeryl, doubting her
truth, yet dreading to disbelieve it. So she saw him fast enmeshed in her
subtleties, and clapped her hands crying, 'Come again with me to the
tomb, and note if there be aught I am to blame in, O Aswarak, and plight
thyself to me beside it.'

He did nothing save to widen his eye at her somewhat; and she said, 'The
two are yonside the tomb, and they hear us not, and see us not by this
light of the Jewel; so come up to it boldly with me; free thy mind of its
doubt, and for a reconcilement kiss me on the way.'

Aswarak moved not forward; but as Bhanavar laid the Jewel in her bosom he
tore the veil from her darkened head, and caught her to him and kissed
her. Then Bhanavar laughed and shouted, 'How is it with thee, Vizier
Aswarak?'

He was tottering, and muttered, ''Tis a death-chill hath struck me even
to my marrow.'

So she drew the Jewel forth once more, and rubbed it ablaze, and the
noise of the Serpents neared; and they streamed into the vault and under
it in fiery jets, surrounding Bhanavar, and whizzing about her till in
their velocity they were indivisible; and she stood as a fountain of fire
clothed in flashes of the underworld, the new loveliness of her face
growing vivid violet like an incessant lightni