abode with them during the period of infancy and childhood, caressed and
cared for, as is said:

The flower a stranger's hand may gather,
Strikes root into the stranger's breast;
Affection is our mother, father,
Friend, and of cherishers the best.

And I loved them as their own child, witting not but that I was their
child, till on a day while I played among some children of my years, the
daughter of the King of Oolb passed by us on a mule, with her slaves and
drawn swords, and called to me, 'Thou little castaway!' and had me
brought to her, and peered upon my face in a manner that frightened me,
for I was young. Then she put me down from the neck of her mule where
she had seated me, saying, 'Child of a dead mother and a runaway father,
what need I fear from thy like, and the dreams of a love-sick Genie?' So
she departed, but I forgot not her words, and dwelt upon them, and grew
fevered with them, and drooped. Now, when he saw my bloom of health
gone, heaviness on my feet, the light hollowed from my eyes, my
benefactor, Ravaloke--he that I had thought my father--took me between
his knees, and asked me what it was and the cause of my ailing; and I
told him.

Then said he, 'This is so: thou art not my child; but I love thee as
mine, O my little Desert-flower; and why the Princess should fancy fear
of thee I like not to think; but fear thou her, for she is a mask of
wiles and a vine trailing over pitfalls; such a sorceress the world
knoweth not as Goorelka of Oolb.'

Now, I was penetrated by what he said, and ceased to be a companion to