r 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 passing.' And he came in the darkness
to a tree, and a bejewelled bank, and other urns, and swinging lamps
without light, and a running water, and a grassy bank, and flowers, and a
silver seat, sprinkling each; and they said all in answer to his question
of the Lily, 'I caught a light from it in passing.' At the last he
stumbled upon the steps of a palace, and ascended them, endowing the
steps with speech as he went, and they said, 'The light of it went over
us.' He groped at the porch of the palace, and gave the door a voice, and
it opened on jasper hinges, shrieking, 'The light of it went through me.'
Then he entered a spacious hall, scattering drops, and voices exclaimed,
'We glow with the light of it.' He passed, groping his way through other
halls and dusk chambers, scattering drops, and as he advanced the voices
increased in the fervour of their replies, saying sequently: 'We blush
with the light of it; We beam with the light of it; We burn with the
light of it.' So, presently he found himself in a long low room, sombrely
lit, roofed with crystals; and in a corner of the room, lo! a damsel on a
couch of purple, she white as silver, spreading radiance. Of such
lustrous