d by Rabesqurat in the depths of
the Enchanted Sea. She sang to him, luting deliriously; and he was
intoxicated with the blissfulness of his fortune, and took a lute and
sang to her love-verses in praise of her, rhyming his rapture. Then they
handed the goblet to each other, and drank till they were on fire with
the joy of things, and life blushed beauteousness. Surely, Rabesqurat was
becoming forgetful of her arts through the strength of those draughts,
till her eye marked the Lily by his side, which he grasped constantly,
the bright flower, and she started and said, 'One grant, O my King, my
husband!'

So he said courteously, 'All grants are granted to the lovely, the
fascinating; and their grief will be lack of aught to ask for?'

Then said she, 'O my husband, my King, I am jealous of that silly flower:
laugh at my weakness, but fling it from thee.'

Now, he was about to cast it from him, when a vanity possessed his mind,
and he exclaimed, 'See first the thing I will do, a wonder.'

She cried, 'No wonders, my life! I am sated with them.'

And he said, 'I am oblivious, O Queen, of how I came by this flower and
this phial; but thou shalt hear a thing beyond the power of common magic,
and see that I am something.'

Now, she plucked at him to abstain from his action, but he held the phial
to the flower. She signed imperiously to some slaves to stay his right
wrist, and they seized on it; but not all of them together could withhold
him from dropping a drop into the petals of the flower, and lo, the Lily
spake, a voice from it like the voice of Noorna, saying, 'Remember the
Seventh Pillar.' Thereat, he lifted his eyes to his brows and frowned
back memory to his aid, and the scene of Karaz, Rabesqurat, Abarak, and
his betrothed was present to him. So perceiving that, the Queen delayed
not while he grasped the phial to take in her hands some water from a
basin near, and flung it over him, crying, 'Oblivion!' And while his mind
was straining to bring back images of what had happened, he fell forward
once more at the feet of Rabesqurat, senseless as a stone falls; such was
the force of her enchantments.

Now, when he awoke the second time he was in the bosom of darkness, and
the Lily gone from his hand; so he lifted the phial to make certain of
that, and groped about till he came to what seemed an urn to the touch,
and into this he dropped a drop, and asked for the Lily; and a voice
said, 'I caught a light from it in pa