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Updated: June 14, 2025
Alwyn laid down the book with a gentle indifference. "My dear fellow, I've had enough of 'Nourhalma," ... he said ... "I'll keep a copy of the first edition, if only as a souvenir of your good-will and energy in bringing it out so admirably but for the rest! ... the book belongs to me no more, but to the public, and so let the public do with it what they will!"
He called upon me, and with a blandly persuasive air, said, that as 'Nourhalma' was having an extraordinary sale, was it worth while to deny the statement of your death just yet? ... He was very anxious, . . but I was firm, . . and lest he should waver, I wrote several letters myself to the leading journals, to establish the certainty, so far as I was aware, of your being in the land of the living.
Thus I, Heliobas, the impostor, take advantage of your state of mind to throw you into a trance, in which, by occult means, you see the vision of an Angel, who bids you meet her at a place called Ardath, and you, also, in your hypnotized condition, write a poem which you entitle 'Nourhalma. Then I, always playing my own little underhand game! read you portions of 'Esdras, and prove to you that 'Ardath' exists, while I delicately SUGGEST, if I do not absolutely COMMAND, your going thither.
The publisher of 'Nourhalma' a very excellent fellow sent me the critique, and wrote asking me whether it was true that the author of the poem was really dead, and if not, whether he should contradict the report.
'Nourhalma! 'Twas the name of what I deemed my masterpiece! ... O silly masterpiece, if it prove thus easy of imitation! ... Yet stay.. let me be patient! ... titles are often copied unconsciously by different authors in different lands, . . and it may chance that Sah-luma's poem is after all his own, not mine.
At the end of about a week or so, it became very generally known among the mystic "Upper Ten" of artistic and literary circles, that Theos Alwyn, the famous author of "Nourhalma" was, to put it fashionably, "in town." According to the classic phrasing of a leading society journal, "Mr.
'Nourhalma' was a 'poor, ill-conceived work, 'an outrage to intellectual perception, 'a good idea, spoilt in the treatment; an amazingly obscure attempt at sublimity' et cetera, . . but there! you can yourself peruse all the criticisms, both favorable and adverse, for I have acted the part of the fond granny to you in the careful cutting out and pasting of everything I could find written concerning you and your work in a book devoted to the purpose, . . and I believe I've missed nothing.
But, being dead continued this estimable scribe 'all we can say is that he yet speaketh, and that "Nourhalma" is a poem of which the literary world cannot be otherwise than justly proud. Let the tears that we shed for this gifted singer's untimely decease be mingled with gratitude for the priceless value of the work his creative genius has bequeathed to us!"
This last was evident, . . for he knew already that the "Idyl of Roses" Sah-luma purposed reciting could be no other than what he had fancied was HIS "Idyl of Roses" ... a poem he had composed, or rather had plagiarized in some mysterious fashion before he had even dreamt of the design of "Nourhalma"...However he had become in part resigned to the peculiar position he occupied, he was just a little sorry for himself, and that was all.
Sah-luma smiled, as one who is tolerant of the whims of a hired buffoon, and, this time seating himself in his ebony chair, was about to commence dictating his Second Canto when Theos, yielding to his desire to speak aloud the idea that had just flashed across his brain said abruptly: "Has it ever seemed to thee, Sah-luma, as it now does to me, that there is a strange resemblance between thy imaginative description of the ideal 'Nourhalma, and the actual charms and virtues of thy strayed singing-maid Niphrata?"
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