visage. So
he cried, 'My Queen! my soul!'

She pointed to Nashta, and the King chid the girl, and sent her forth
lean with his shifted displeasure, as a kitten slinks wet from a
fish-pond where it had thought to catch a great fish. Then Bhanavar
exclaimed, 'There was a change in thy manner to me before that creature.'

He sought to dissimulate with her, but at last he confessed, 'I was truly
this morning the victim of a sorcery.'

Thereupon she cried, 'And thou went angered to find me not by thee on the
couch, but one in my place, a hag of ugliness. Hear then the case, O
Mashalleed! Surely that old crone had a dream, and it was that if she
slept one night by the King she would arise fresh in health from her
ills, and with powers lasting a year to heal others of all maladies with
a touch. So she came to me, petitioning me to bring this about. O my lord
the King, did I well in being privy to her desire?'

The King could not doubt this story of Bhanavar, seeing her constant
loveliness, and the arch of her flashing brow, and the oval of her cheek
and chin smooth as milk. So he said, 'O my Queen! I had thought to go, as
I must, gladly; but how shall I go, knowing thy truth, thy beauty
unchanged; thee faithful, a follower of the injunctions of the Prophet in
charitable deeds?'

Cried she, 'And whither goeth my lord, and on what errand?'

He answered, 'The people of a province southward have raised the standard
of revolt and mocked my authority; they have been joined by certain of
the Arab chiefs subject to my dominion, and have defeated my armies. 'Tis
to subdue them I go; yea, to crush them. Yet, wallaby! I know not. Care I
if kingdoms fall away, and nations, so that I have thee? Nay, let all
pass, so that thou remain by me.'

Bhanavar paced from him to a mirror, and frowned at the reflection of her
fairness, thinking, 'Such had he spoken to the girl Nashta, or another,
this King!' And she thought, 'I have been beloved by the noblest three on
earth; I will ask no more of love; vengeance I have had. 'Tis time that I
demand of my beauty nothing save power, and I will make this King my
stepping-stone to power, rejoicing my soul with the shock of armies.'

Now, she persuaded Mashalleed to take her with him on his expedition
against the Arabs; and they set forth, heading a great assemblage of
warriors, southward to the land bordering the Desert. The King credited
the suggestions of Bhanavar, that Aswarak had disappeared t