e in a manner that frightened me,
for I was young. Then she put me down from the neck of her mule where she
had seated me, saying, 'Child of a dead mother and a runaway father, what
need I fear from thy like, and the dreams of a love-sick Genie?' So she
departed, but I forgot not her words, and dwelt upon them, and grew
fevered with them, and drooped. Now, when he saw my bloom of health gone,
heaviness on my feet, the light hollowed from my eyes, my benefactor,
Ravaloke--he that I had thought my father--took me between his knees, and
asked me what it was and the cause of my ailing; and I told him.

Then said he, 'This is so: thou art not my child; but I love thee as
mine, O my little Desert-flower; and why the Princess should fancy fear
of thee I like not to think; but fear thou her, for she is a mask of
wiles and a vine trailing over pitfalls; such a sorceress the world
knoweth not as Goorelka of Oolb.'

Now, I was penetrated by what he said, and ceased to be a companion to
them that loved childish games and romps, and meditated by myself in
gardens and closets, feigning sleep when the elder ones discoursed, that
I might learn something of this mystery, and all that was spoken
perplexed me more, as the sage declareth:

Who in a labyrinth wandereth without clue,
More that he wandereth doth himself undo.

Though I was quick as the quick-eyed falcon, I discovered nought, flying
ever at false game,--

A follower of misleading beams,
A cheated soul, the mock of dreams.

At times I thought that it was the King of Oolb was my father, and
plotted to come in his path; and there were kings and princes of far
countries whom I sought to encounter, that they might claim me; but none
claimed me. O my betrothed, few gave me love beside Ravaloke, and when
the wife that he cherished died, he solely, for I was lost in waywardness
and the slave of moody imaginings. 'Tis said:

If thou the love of the world for thyself wouldst gain,
mould thy breast
Liker the world to become, for its like the world loveth best;

and this was not I then.

Now, the sons and daughters of men are used to celebrate the days of
their birth with gifts and rejoicings, but I could only celebrate that
day which delivered me from death into the hands of Ravaloke, as none
knew my birth-hour. When it was the twelfth return of this event,
Ravaloke, my heart's father, called me to him and pressed in my hand a
glittering coin, t