Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
When, at intervals, these pleasing sounds ceased, Sah-luma's conversation, brilliant, witty, refined, and sparkling with light anecdote and lighter jest, replaced with admirable sufficiency, the left-off harmonies, and Theos, keenly alive to the sensuous enemy of his own emotions, felt that he had never before enjoyed such an astonishing, delightful, and altogether fairy-like feast.
She paused, Sah-luma's gaze rested on her intently, a half- amused, half-tender light leaping from under the drooping shade of his long, silky black lashes, she caught the look, and a little shiver ran through her delicate frame, she pressed one hand on her heart, and resumed in steadier and more even tones, "My lord has perhaps not heard of the disturbances of the early morning in the city?" she asked "The riotous crowd in the marketplace the ravings of the Prophet Khosrul? ... the sudden arrest and imprisonment of many, and the consequent wrath of the King?"
He therefore, sorely against his will, and only for Sah-luma's sake, kept silence, watching Nir- jalis meanwhile in a sort of horrible fascination.
Save ME! ... Save ME! ... I was the Poet's adverse Critic, and who but I should write his Eulogy now that he is no more! ... Pity! ... Pity, most courteous, gentle sir! ... Save me if only for the sake of Sah-luma's future honor! Thou knowest not how warmly, how generously, how nobly, I can praise the dead!"
Thus meditating a few steps more brought him to the entrance of Sah-luma's princely abode, the gates stood wide open, and a pleasant murmur of laughter and soft singing floated toward him across the splendid court where the great fountains were tossing up to the bright sky their straight, glistening columns of snowy spray.
For had not the crazed Prophet called Lysia an "unvirgined virgin and Queen- Courtesan"? ... and, according to Sah-luma's present explanation, nothing more dire and offensive in the way of open blasphemy could be uttered! Yet the question still remained , was Khosrul right or wrong?
Theos smiled involuntarily.. how, charming, after all was Sah-luma's sublime egotism! how almost child-like was his confidence in himself and his own ability to engender joy! All at once the young girl Zoralin spoke, her accents were low and timorous: "May it please my lord Sah-luma to hear me..." she said and paused.
And taking the clay-cold hands in his own, he kissed them reverently, and, with an unconscious memory not born of his recent adventures, folded them on the dead Laureate's breast in the fashion of a Cross. As he did this an icy spasm seemed to contract his heart, . . seized by a sudden insufferable anxiety, he stared like one spell-bound into Sah-luma's wide-open, fixed, and glassy eyes.
'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.
As he spoke the girl turned round as though in obedience to some mechanical impulse, and fully confronted the multitude, . . her pale, pure face, framed in a shining aureole of rippling fair hair, floated before Theos's bewildered eyes like a vision seen indistinctly in a magic crystal, and he was for a moment uncertain of her identity; but quick as a flash Sah-luma's glance lighted upon her, and, with a cry of horror that sent desolate echoes through and through the arches of the Temple, he started from his seat, his arms outstretched, his whole frame convulsed and quivering.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking