Her room looked out through the grated window into the
narrow dark Gully where the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in
the blue slime. She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed the
Gods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve of living
alone.
One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a big
heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from
behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago, knowing
that, for all practical purposes, the old Arabian Nights are good guides, went
forward to the window, and whispered that verse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
which begins:
Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind the grating,
and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the
Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses
to the North.
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