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was heavy upon her, so that her reason well-nigh fled for joy and she recited the following verses:
With all my soul I’ll ransom him who came to me by night In darkness, whilst I waited for the tryst between us plight;
And nought aroused me but his voice lamenting soft and low; And I, “Fair welcome, O my love, to joyance and delight!”
A thousand times his cheek I kissed and yet a thousand times I clipped him close in my embrace, where he was veiled from sight.
Quoth I, “At last have I attained to that I wearied for; So to praise God for this His grace is only due and right.”
And then the goodliest of nights we passed, even as we would, Until the curtains of the dark were drawn by morning light.
When it was day, she made him enter a place of concealment in her apartment and he abode there till nightfall, when she brought him out and they sat carousing. Presently, he said to her, ‘I wish to return to my own country and tell my father what has passed between us, that he may send his Vizier to demand thee in marriage of thy father.’ ‘O my love,’ answered she, ‘I fear, if thou return to thy country and kingdom, thou wilt be distracted from me and forget the love of me or that thy father will not fall in with thy wishes, and I shall die. Meseems the better counsel were that thou abide with me and in my hand, I looking on thy face and thou on mine, till I devise some plan, whereby we may escape together some night and flee to thy country; for my hopes are cut off from my people and I despair of them.’ ‘I hear and obey,’ replied he, and they fell again to their carousal.
He abode with her thus for some time, till, one night, the wine was pleasant to them and they lay not down to sleep till break of day. Now it chanced that one of the Kings sent her father a present, and amongst other things, a necklace of unique jewels, nine-and-twenty in number, to whose price a king’s treasures might not suffice. Quoth Abdulcadir, ‘This beseemeth none but my daughter Heyat
