paced beside Zoora the mare, weeping and caressing her, reminding her of
the deeds of Zurvan, and the battles she had borne him to, and his
greatness and his gentleness. And the mare went without leading. It was
broad light when they had passed the glade and the covert of the wood.
Before them, between great mountains, glimmered a space of rolling grass
fed to deep greenness by many brooks. The shadow of a mountain was over
it, and one slant of the rising sun, down a glade of the mountain,
touched the green tent of the Emir, where it stood a little apart from
the others of his tribe. Goats and asses of the tribe were pasturing in
the quiet, but save them nothing moved among the tents, and it was deep
peacefulness. Bhanavar led Zoora slowly before the tent of the Emir, and
disburdened Zoora of the helpless weight, and spread the long fair limbs
of the youth lengthwise across the threshold of the Emir's tent, sitting
away from it with clasped hands, regarding it. Ere long the Emir came
forth, and his foot was on the body of his son, and he knew death on the
chin and the eyes of Zurvan, his sole son. Now the Emir was old, and
with the shock of that sight the world darkened before him, and he gave
forth a groan and stumbled over the sunken breast of Zurvan, and
stretched over him as one without life. When Bhanavar saw that old man
stretched over the body of his son, she sickened, and her ear was filled
with the wailings of grief that would arise, and she stood up and stole
away from the habitations of the tribe, stricken with her guilt, and
wandered beyond the mountains, knowing not whither she went, looking on
no living thing, for the sight of a thing that moved was hateful to her,
and all sounds were sounds of lamentation for a great loss.

Now, she had wandered on alone two days and two nights, and nigh morn she
was seized with a swoon of weariness, and fell forward with her face to
the earth, and lay there prostrate, even as one that is adoring the
shrine; and it was on the sands of the desert she was lying. It chanced