the sands of the desert, halting not till he was
in the hum of many tents, and the sun of that day hung a red half-circle
across the sand. He alighted before the tent of his mother, and sent
women in to her. When his mother came forth to the greetings of her son,
he said no word, but pointed to the damsel where he had leaned her at the
threshold of her tent. His mother kissed him on the forehead, and turned
her shoulder to peer upon the damsel. But when she had close view of
Bhanavar, she spat, and scattered her hair, and stamped, and cried aloud,
'Away with her! this slut of darkness! there's poison on her very skirts,
and evil in the look of her.'

Then said he, 'O Rukrooth, my mother! art thou lost to charity and the
uses of kindliness and the laws of hospitality, that thou talkest this of
the damsel, a stranger? Take her now in, and if she be past help, as I
fear; be it thy care to give her decent burial; and if she live, O my
mother, tend her for the love of thy son, and for the love of him be
gentle with her.'

While he spake, Rukrooth his mother knelt over the damsel, as a cat that
sniffeth the suspected dish; and she flashed her eyes back on him,
exclaiming scornfully, 'So art thou befooled, and the poison is already
in thee! But I will not have her, O my son! and thou, Ruark, my son,
neither shalt thou have her. What! will I not die to save thee from a
harm? Surely thy frown is little to me, my son, if I save thee from a
harm; and the damsel here is--I shudder to think what; but never lay
shadow across my threshold dark as this!'

Now, Ruark gazed upon his mother, and upon Bhanavar, and the face of
Bhanavar was as a babe in sleep, and his soul melted to the parted
sweetness of her soft little curved red lips and her closed eyelids, and
her innocent open hands, where she lay at the threshold of the tent,
unconscious of hardness and the sayings of the unjust. So he cried
fiercely, 'No paltering, O Rukrooth, my mother: and if not to thy tent,
then to mine!'

When she heard him say that in the voice of his anger, Rukrooth fixed her
eyes on him sorrowfully, and sighed, and went up to him and drew his head
once against her heart, and retreated into the tent, bidding the women
that were there bring in the body of the damsel.

It was the morning of another day when Bhanavar awoke; and she awoke in a
dream of Zoora, the mare of Zurvan her betrothed, that was dead, and the
name of Zoora was on her tongue as she star