to let her mother know of our love. Sometimes
the girl was very sad and fearful lest her mother should come to know.
One day her father said to her: "Sweetheart, for some time I have
noticed that your beauty is not what it was. How is this? Has sickness
touched you? Tell me that I may seek a cure." Alas! there was now no
way of concealing the mingled delight and anguish of our love; from
secret it became known. I was put in prison and the world grew dark to
my rose, bereft of her lover.

'The peri-king ordered me to be burnt, and said: "Why have you, a man,
done this perfidious thing in my house?" His demons and peris
collected ambar-wood and made a pile, and would have set me on it,
when I remembered the word of life which the two peris I had rescued
had breathed into my ear, and I asked that my body might be rubbed
with oil to release me the sooner from torture. This was allowed, and
those two contrived to be the anointers. I was put into the fire and
it was kept up for seven days and nights. By the will of the Great
King it left no trace upon me. At the end of a week the peri-king
ordered the ashes to be cast upon the dust-heap, and I was found alive
and unharmed.

'Peris who had seen Gul consumed by her love for me now interceded
with the king, and said: "It is clear that your daughter's fortunes
are bound up with his, for the fire has not hurt him. It is best to
give him the girl, for they love one another. He is King of Waq of
Qaf, and you will find none better."

'To this the king agreed, and made formal marriage between Gul and me.
You now know the price I paid for this faithless creature. O prince!
remember our compact.'

'I remember,' said the prince; 'but tell me what brought Queen Gul to
her present pass?'

'One night,' continued King Sinaubar, 'I was aroused by feeling Gul's
hands and feet, deadly cold, against my body. I asked her where she
had been to get so cold, and she said she had had to go out. Next
morning, when I went to my stable I saw that two of my horses,
Windfoot and Tiger, were thin and worn out. I reprimanded the groom
and beat him. He asked where his fault lay, and said that every night
my wife took one or other of these horses and rode away, and came back
only just before dawn. A flame kindled in my heart, and I asked myself
where she could go and what she could do. I told the groom to be
silent, and when next Gul took a horse from the stable to saddle
another quickly and bring it