d
she sang her name to him ere he knew her, and the sad sweetness of her
name filled his soul, and he replied to her with it weakly, like a far
echo that groweth fainter, 'Bhanavar! Bhanavar! Bhanavar!' Then a change
came over him, and the pain of the poison and the passion of the
death-throe, and he was wistful of her no more; but she lay by him,
embracing him, and in the last violence of his anguish he hugged her to
his breast. Then it was over, and he sank. And the twain were as a great
wave heaving upon the shore; lo, part is wasted where it falleth; part
draweth back into the waters. So was it!

Now the chill of dawn breathed blue on the lake and was astir among the
dewy leaves of the wood, when Bhanavar arose from the body of the youth,
and as she rose she saw that his mare Zoora, his father's first gift, was
snuffing at the ear of her dead master, and pawing him. At that sight the
tears poured from her eyelids, and she sobbed out to the mare, 'O Zoora!
never mare bore nobler burden on her back than thou in Zurvan my
betrothed. Zoora! thou weepest, for death is first known to thee in the
dearest thing that was thine; as to me, in the dearest that was mine! And
O Zoora, steed of Zurvan my betrothed, there's no loveliness for us in
life, for the loveliest is gone; and let us die, Zoora, mare of Zurvan my
betrothed, for what is dying to us, O Zoora, who cherish beyond all that
which death has taken?'

So spake she to Zoora the mare, kissing her, and running her fingers
through the long white mane of the mare. Then she stooped to the body of
her betrothed, and toiled with it to lift it across the crimson
saddle-cloth that was on the back of Zoora; and the mare knelt to her,
that she might lay on her back the body of Zurvan; when that was done,
Bhanavar paced beside Zoora the mare, weeping and caressing her,
reminding her of the deeds of Zurvan, and the battles she had borne him
to, and his greatness and his gentleness. And the mare went without
leading. It was broad light when they had passed the glade and the covert
of the wood. Before them, between great mountains, glimmered a space of
rolling grass fed to deep greenness by many brooks. The shadow of a
mountain was over it, and one slant of the rising sun, down a glade of
the mountain, touched the green tent of the Emir, where it stood a little
apart from the others of his tribe. Goats and asses of the tribe were
pasturing in the quiet, but save them nothing moved