heaven I
saw no light, until I conversed about you. Then she almost threw herself
on my neck when we were left alone together, and I explained the cause
of my arrival. I gave her a camel-load of compliments from you--told her
that you were almost dead with love--poor fellow!--and she burst into
tears!"

"Kind, lovely soul! What did she tell you to say to me?"

"Better ask what she did not. She says that, from the time that you left
her, she has never rejoiced even in her dreams; that the winter snow has
fallen on her heart, and that nothing but a meeting with her beloved,
like a vernal sun, can melt it.... But if I were to continue to the end
of her messages, and you were to wait to the end of my story, we should
both reach Derbend with grey beards. Spite of all this, she almost drove
me away, hurrying me off, lest you should doubt her love!"

"Darling of my soul! you know not--I cannot explain what bliss it is to
be with thee, what torment to be separated from thee, not to see thee!"

"That is exactly the thing, Ammalat; she grieves that she cannot rejoice
her eyes with a sight of him whom she never can be weary of gazing at.
'Is it possible,' she says, 'that he cannot come but for one little day,
for one short hour, one little moment?'"

"To look on her, and then die, I would be content!"

"Ah, when you behold her, you will wish to live. She is become quieter
than she was of old; but even yet she is so lively, that when you see
her your blood sparkles within you."

"Did you tell her why it is not in my power to do her will, and to
accomplish my own passionate desire?"

"I related such tales that you would have thought me the Shah of
Persia's chief poet. Seltanetta shed tears like a fountain after rain.
She does nothing else but weep."

"Why, then, reduce her to despair? 'I cannot now' does not mean 'it is
for ever impossible.' You know what a woman's heart is, Saphir Ali: for
them the end of hope is the end of love."

"You sow words on the wind, djannion (my soul.) Hope, for lovers, is a
skein of worsted--endless. In cool blood, you do not even trust your
eyes; but fall in love, and you will believe in ghosts. I think that
Seltanetta would hope that you could ride to her from your coffin--not
only from Derbend."

"And how is Derbend better than a coffin to me? Does not my heart feel
its decay, without power to escape it? Here is only my corpse: my soul
is far away."

"It seems that your senses often tak