She answered, 'Even so.'

Ere Slubli Bagarag could question her further she embraced him, and blew
upon his eyes, and he was blinded by her breath, and saw not her
departure, groping for a seat on the rocks, and thinking her still by
him. Sight returned not to him till long after weariness had brought the
balm of sleep upon his eyelids.






THE TALKING HAWK

Now, when he awoke he found himself alone in that place, the moon shining
over the low meadows and flower-cups fair with night-dew. Odours of
night-flowers were abroad, filling the cool air with deliciousness, and
he heard in the gardens below songs of the bulbul: it was like a dream to
his soul, and he lay somewhile contemplating the rich loveliness of the
scene, that showed no moving thing. Then rose he and bethought him of
the words of Noorna, and of the City of Oolb, and the phial of the waters
of Paravid in his vest; and he drew it forth, and dropped a drop of it on
the rock where he had reclined. A deep harmony seemed suddenly to awake
inside the rock, and to his interrogation as to the direction of Oolb, he
heard, 'The path of the shadows of the moon.'

Thereupon he advanced to a prominent part of the rocks above the meadows,
and beheld the shadows of the moon thrown forward into dimness across a
waste of sand. And he stepped downward to the level of sand, and went