Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 3.djvu/394

364 A moon, in your tents that rises, to Allah I commend, One my heart loves and tenders, shut in from the sight of her swain. Anon she is kind, anon angry: how goodly her coquetry is! For all that is done of a loved one must needs to her lover be fain.

When I had finished, she said to me, “God assain thy body and sweeten thy voice! Verily, thou art perfect in beauty and good breeding and singing. But now rise and return to thy place, ere the lady Dunya come back, lest she find thee not and be wroth with thee.” So I kissed the earth before her and the old woman forewent me to the door whence I came. I entered and going up to the couch, found that my wife had come back and was lying asleep there. So I sat down at her feet and rubbed them; whereupon she opened her eyes and seeing me, drew up her feet and gave me a kick that threw me off the couch, saying, “O traitor, thou hast been false to thine oath and hast perjured thyself. Thou sworest to me that thou wouldst not stir from thy place; yet didst thou break thy promise and go to the lady Zubeideh. By Allah, but that I fear scandal, I would pull down the palace over her head!” Then said she to her black slave, “Harkye, Sewab, arise and strike off this lying traitor’s head, for we have no further need of him.” So the slave came up to me and tearing a strip from his skirt, bound my eyes with it and would have cut off my head; but all her women, great and small, came up to her and said to her, “O our lady, this is not the first who hath erred: indeed, he knew not thy humour and hath done nothing deserving of death.” “By Allah,” replied she, “I must needs set my mark on him.” And she bade beat me; so they beat me on my sides, and the marks ye saw are the scars of that beating. Then she bade them put me out, and they carried me to a distance from the house and cast me down. I rose and dragged myself little by little to my own house, where I sent for a surgeon, who dressed my wounds and comforted me. As soon as I was recovered