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Updated: May 24, 2025
But tell me" and here his voice had a ring of suppressed anxiety within it "tell me, Sah-luma, thine own thought concerning it!" "I? I think naught of it!" replied Sah-luma with airy contempt "Such a creed may find followers in time to come, but now, of what avail to warn us of things that do not concern our present modes of life?
"Ye gods!" he exclaimed "Is there more to come of this bombastic ranting and vile torturing of phrases unheard of and altogether unnatural! O Sah-luma! marvellous Sah-luma! twaddler Sah-luma! what a brain box is thine! ... How full of dislocated word-puzzles and similes gone mad!
This was a problem which Theos longed to investigate and yet recoiled from, instinctively he felt that upon its answer hung the fate of Al-Kyris, and also, what just then seemed more precious than anything else, the life of Sah-luma. He could not decide with himself WHY this was so, he simply accepted his own inward assurance that so it was.
Not, however, before Theos had recognized those dark, haughty features, those relentless brows, and that, stern almost lurid smile! ... and with a quick convulsive movement he grasped his companion's arm. "Hist, Sah-luma!" he whispered ... "Saw you not the King?" Sah-luma started as though he had received a dagger thrust, . . his very lips turned pale in the moonlight.
'Tis an unequal simile, my friend! as well compare a fiery planet with a twinkling dewdrop, as draw a parallel between the heroic ideal maid 'Nourhalma' and my fluttering singing-bird, Niphrata!" Theos sighed involuntarily, but forcing a smile, let the subject drop and held his peace, while Sah-luma, taking up the thread of his poetical narrative, went on reciting.
"The Virgin Priestess of the Sun and the Divine Nagaya hath need of thee to-night, Sah-luma!" he said, with a sort of suppressed derision underlying his words, and taking from his breast a ring that glittered like a star, he held it out in the palm of one hand "And also" he added "of thy friend the stranger, to whom she desires to accord a welcome. Behold her signet!"
"What sayest thou, Sah-luma?" he demanded in a sort of ferocious gasping whisper ... "Repeat thy words! ... Repeat them!" ... and his hand clutched at his dagger-hilt, while his restless, lowering glance flashed from Lysia to the Laureate and from the Laureate back to Lysia again.. "Death encompasses us, . . this is no time for trifling! ... Speak!".. and his voice suddenly rose to a frantic shout of rage, "Speak!
And as she said this she looked up with a sudden affright in her dark, lovely eyes, as though she were alarmed at her own presumption. Sah-luma met her troubled gaze calmly and with a bright smile of complacent vanity.
Entangled in perplexed reveries he scarcely noticed the brilliant crowds of people that were flocking hither and thither through the streets, many of whom recognizing Sah-luma waved their hands or shouted some gay word of greeting, he saw, as it were without seeing.
The problem of the poem "Nourhalma" ... was explained, ... he had designed it when he had played his part on the stage of life as Sah-luma, and perhaps not even then for the first time!
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