our of the night Ukleet was introduced into the garden of the harem, and
he was in the darkness of that garden a white-faced porter with knees
that knocked the dread-march together; but Bhanavar strengthened his
soul, and he said to her, ''Twas the doing of Boolp the broker: and he
whispered the Vizier of thee and thy beauty, O my mistress! Surely thy
punishment and this ruin is but part payment to Boolp of the price of the
Jewel, the great Jewel that's in the hands of the Vizier.'

Then she questioned him: 'And Almeryl, the Prince, my husband, what of
him?'

Ukleet was dumb, and Bhanavar asked to hear no more. Surely she was at
the gates of pale spirits within an hour of her interview with Ukleet,
and there was no blessedness for her save in death, the stiffer of ills,
the drug that is infallible. As is said:

Dark is that last stage of sorrow
Which from Death alone can borrow
Comfort:--

Bhanavar would have died then, but in a certain pause of her fever the
Vizier stood by her. She looked at him long as she lay, and the life in
her large eyes was ebbing away slowly; but there seemed presently a
check, as an eddy comes in the stream, and the light of intelligence
flowed like a reviving fire into her eyes, and her heart quickened with
desire of life while she looked on the Vizier. So she passed the pitch of
that fever, and bloomed anew in her beauty, and cherished it, for she had
a purpose.

Now, there was rejoicing in the harem of the Vizier Aswarak when Bhanavar
arose from the couch; and the Vizier exulted, thinking, 'I have tamed
this wild beauty, or she had reached death in that extremity.' So he
allowed Bhanavar greater freedom and indulgences, and Bhanavar feigned to
give her soul to the pleasures women delight in, and the Vizier buried
her in gems and trinkets and costly raiment, robes of exquisite silks,
the choicest of Samarcand and China; and he permitted her to make
purchases among certain of the warehouses of the city and the shops of
the tradesmen, jewellers and others, so that she went about as she would,
but for the slaves that attended her and the overseer of the harem. This
continued, and Aswarak became urgent with her, and to remove suspicion
from him she named a day from that period when she would be his. Meantime
she contrived to see Ukleet the porter frequently, and within a week of
her engagement with the Vizier she gazed from a lattice-window of the
harem, and beheld in the ga