of her; the fires of his love had a tongue, his speech
was a torrent of flame at the feet of the damsel. And Bhanavar exclaimed,
'Oh, what am I, what am I, who have slain my love, my lover!--that one
should love me and call on me for love? My life is a long weeping for
him! Death is my wooer!'

Ruark still pleaded with her, and she said in fair gentleness, 'Speak not
of it now in the freshness of my grief! Other times and seasons are
there. My soul is but newly widowed!'

Fierce was the eye of the Chief, and he sprang up, crying, 'By the life
of my head, I know thy wiles and the reading of these delays: but I'll
never leave thee, nor lose sight of thee, Bhanavar! And think not to fly
from me, thou subtle, brilliant Serpent! for thy track is my track, and
thy condition my condition, and thy fate my fate. By Allah! this is so.'

Then he strode from her swiftly, and called to his Arabs. They had
kindled a fire to roast the flesh of a buffalo, slaughtered by them from
among a herd, and were laughing and singing beside the flames of the
fire. So by the direction of their Chief the Arabs brought slices of
sweet buffalo-flesh to Bhanavar, with cakes of grain: and Bhanavar ate
alone, and drank from the waters before her. Then they laid for her a
couch within the cave, and the aching of her spirit was lulled, and she
slept there a dreamless sleep till morning.

By the morning light Bhanavar looked abroad for the Chief, and he was
nowhere by. A pang of violent hope struck through her, and she pressed
her bosom, praying he might have left her, and climbed the clefts and
ledges of the mountain to search over the fair expanse of pasture beyond,
for a trace of him departing. The sun was on the heads of the heavy
flowers, and a flood of gold down the gorges, and a delicate rose hue on
the distant peaks and upper dells of snow, which were as a crown to the
scene she surveyed; but no sight of Ruark had she. And now she was
beginning to rejoice, but on a sudden her eye caught far to east a
glimpse of something in motion across an even slope of the lower hills
leaning to the valley; and it was a herd that rushed forward, like a
black torrent of the mountains flinging foam this way and that, and after
the herd and at the sides of the herd she distinguished the white cloaks
and scarfs and glittering steel of the Arabs of Ruark. Presently she saw
a horseman break from the rest, and race in a line toward her. She knew
this one for Ruark,