Shems-ud-dÌn fell back on reverie. Above the black gauze veil of earth, the stars beat slumberously. Across the terraced roofs came the voice of one singing, with the twang of a lute. The song was all of love. Now it rose to a frenzied howl, now sank to a passionate moan. From time to time, among the hidden ways beneath, a strife of dogs broke out, raged noisily for a space, and then subsided.

A great weariness beset the sheykh—the accumulated claims of all the nights and days when he had shunned repose. Though he wrestled with it, aware that now, more than ever, there was call to watch, little by little that lassitude overpowered him. He beheld the star-flecked sky for a while fitfully, as if a curtain flapped between it and his eyes. Then he saw no more of sky, or stars, or darkness veiling the face of earth.

He dreamed.

He sat again in his shop in the small bazaar, with hands outspread over the brazier. He heard the chime of camel bells. Some one spoke behind him, when, turning, he beheld an afrÌt of baleful aspect, having eyes of flame. And what that devil bade him do, that perforce he did, though well knowing that it was against his own soul.

At blush of day he set out from his small white city of the tawny hills, and the people thronged about him, called him holy, cried to him for a blessing. And he blessed them—he, the slave of evil. The welkin rang with laughter of foul fiends.

He stood beneath the dying tree, denouncing Fatmeh as in righteous anger. And as the woman writhed in anguish at his feet, a voice came from within the litter, “Is the woman’s sin above thine? Hast not thou recourse to another than Allah, a creature no more potent than this tree?”

He fell down and strove to pray. But his prayer went crooked, turned away from God. That jinni was at his ear, distracting him.

So he arose and went his way through the tainted air. Friends turned to foes. Old friends grinned aside, mocking him.

Then came one who mistook him for a saint—a poor man, good and faithful. He longed to undeceive him, but could not, the devil preventing.

He stood in the smiling court of the Frank’s house. He knelt; he prostrated himself; he offered gifts; he prayed to that unbeliever in place of Allah; wide awake to the sin he thus committed, yet constrained thereto by the evil thing possessing him.

“Save but the life! but the life alone!” he cried; and the infidel, though something loath, consented.

Abd-ur-Rahman, Shibli, Hassan—all old friends forsook him. Only that simple one, who believed in him, still clung to him with reverence. The aged Chief of the Learned, all wise men, remonstrated with him. He saw their mouths open and shut, he felt their disapproval; but his mind made nothing of what they said.

“Save but the life!” he cried in their defiance.

He sat in a chamber of the Frank’s house and waited, his soul racked with suspense. The chair on which he sat proved an instrument of torture, crushing both his feet.

Suddenly, a man moved in the room with him, supporting something with both hands.

“The life is saved, O sheykh, the life only. See it here before thee.”

The speaker turned, revealing the earth-hued face, the eyes of flame, of that same jinni who had beguiled him at the first. His laugh had the rattle of dry bones as he repeated: “Behold what it is, the life only!”

Then he looked and saw two wooden boxes united by a thin cord, which writhed and twisted between them like a living worm. The tops of the boxes also seemed alive, for they rose and fell regularly like the breast of a sleeper. He stared terror-stricken, fixed to that accursed chair. He saw his poor disciple approach the life and lift both hands in admiration of the rare contrivance. He realized the stupendous mockery of the hope, inspired by devils, which had led him on through sin after sin—for this.

Then, as he glowered upon that fruit of evil, the pulse of the barren life grew faint and fainter, the cord more languid in its twistings. In dread lest even that should escape him, by a mighty effort he wrenched himself free of the chair. Men seized him, wrestled with him, but he broke away, crying:

“O Allah, mercy! It is the life.”

There came a shock, a flood of darkness. The stars shone above him, among them the waning moon, late risen, like a flower’s curled petal. Some one bent over him, grasping his shoulder. A woman’s wail came from below, in the house.

“Allah witness, Zeyd and I have striven hard to wake thee, O my master. It is now too late. Thou hearest that voice of woe, the voice of Fatmeh. Peace to the beloved. She is but now dead.”

“Praise be to Allah! What is the hour?”

“It nears the dawn, O my master.”

“It is seemly that we make arrangements for her burial this day. Allah forbid that I should trespass any longer upon the kindness of this stranger. I will make him a suitable present, and then, having buried the body of my soul, we will return to our own place.”

“Spare thyself all concern,” said MÂs gently. “IsmaÌl, the doorkeeper, is more skilled than we are in the ways of this city. And he values thee above all living men. He will bargain for a plot of ground, and smooth the way of thy grief before thee.”

“May Allah give peace to him and to thee! Nevertheless, I shall go with him to direct his judgment.”

In all the words of Shems-ud-dÌn there was now a note of decision, almost cheerful, much at variance with his recent listless sorrow. MÂs and Zeyd ebn AbbÂs marveled at his might of resignation.