and become
their trust forever, and he struck again his instrument of strings and
sang on.

When the strings of pearls that hung down from her neck began to gleam
all over Saranoora I knew that dawn was near and that that memorable
night was all but gone. And at last we left the garden and came to
the abyss to see the sunrise shine on the amethyst cliff. And at first
it lit up the beauty of Saranoora and then it topped the world and
blazed upon those cliffs of amethyst until it dazzled our eyes, and we
turned from it and saw the workman going out along the tusk to hollow
it and to carve a balustrade of fair professional figures. And those
who had drunken bak began to awake and to open their dazzled eyes at
the amethyst precipice and to rub them and turn them away. And now
those wonderful kingdoms of song that the dark musicians established
all night by magical chords dropped back again to the sway of that
ancient silence who ruled before the gods, and the musicians wrapped
their cloaks about them and covered up their marvellous instruments
and stole away to the plains; and no one dared ask them whither they
went or why they dwelt there, or what god they served. And the dance
stopped and all the queens departed. And then the female slave came
out again by a door and emptied her basket of sapphires down the abyss
as I saw her do before. Beautiful Saranoora said that those great
queens would never wear their sapphires more than once and that every
day at noon a merchant from the mountains sold new ones for that
evening. Yet I suspected that something more than extravagance lay at
the back of that seemingly wasteful act of tossing sapphires into an
abyss, for thee were in the depths of it those two dragons of gold of
whom nothing seemed to be known. And I thought, and I think so still,
that Singanee, terrific though he was in war with the elephants, from
whose tusks he had built his palace, well knew and even feared those
dragons in the abyss, and perhaps valued those priceless jewels less
than he valued his queens, and that he to whom so many lands paid
beautiful tribute out of their dread of his spear, himself paid
tribute to the golden dragons. Whether those dragons had wings I could
not see; nor, if they had, could I tell if they could bear that weight
of solid gold from the abyss; nor by what paths they could crawl from
it did I know. And I know not what use to a golden dragon should
sapphires be or a queen. O