Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/121

109 for, every night, when she had made an end of the girdle, she would work awhile at the kerchief. When it was finished, she gave it to Noureddin, who put it on his shoulders and went out to walk in the market, whilst all the merchants and people and notables of the town crowded about him, to gaze on his beauty and that of the kerchief.

One night, after this, he awoke from sleep and found Meryem weeping passing sore and reciting the following verses:

‘O my lady Meryem,’ said he, ‘what ails thee to weep?’ ‘I weep for the anguish of parting,’ answered she; ‘for my heart forebodes me thereof.’ Quoth he, ‘O lady of fair ones, and who shall part us, seeing that I love and tender thee above all creatures?’ And she replied, ‘And I love thee twice as well as thou me; but [blind] confidence in fortune still causes folk fall into affliction, and right well saith the poet: