"A good evening to you!" exclaimed this winning Unknown, looking at me with a kind of wild tenderness, and pressing my hand in his sinewy ones-a contact that I felt in my innermost being.
Ah, now I knew that the emptiness of life was over for me!
Alabanda, for so was the stranger named, proceeded to tell me his story: how he and his servant had been attacked by the robbers of the neighbourhood, as had I; how he had put them to flight before meeting me; had lost his way; and so had been waiting alone in this spot. He pointed to his dead steed, adding sadly:
"The affair has cost me a friend, you see".
I gave my own horse to his servant, and we walked onward together.
"All this has served us both quite right," I said, as we went along, arm in arm. "Why have we two been so tardy to know one another?—always delaying, until accident itself brings us to each other?"
"As to that matter," responded Alabanda, "you have been the colder one; the blame is yours. I have been riding after you, this very day".
"Friend ", I exclaimed, "you shall never be my forerunner in our love!"
Ever more and more joyful, and deeper within the natures of each other, did we feel ourselves growing, now that we had met. Coming near to the city, and passing a good khan that stood amid plashing fountains and scent laden-fruit trees, we resolved to pass the night there. Long did we sit together in the open window. A deep spiritual hush had come ever us. Earth and sea were silent as the stars that looked down on us. Scarcely a breeze from the waters came into our room, to play with the lights and shadows; scarcely the strongest notes of some distant music reached to us The occasional thunder in the highest aether overhead sounded from afar in the stillness, like the breathing of a giant in his terrifying dream.
Our souls came together all the more vehemently, because so involuntarily had come at last their joining. We met like two brooks that rush down from the hills, breaking past the weight of earth and stone and rotten wood and all that first burdensome chaos, to make a wayto each other; until, with the same strength of current, they go onward in one majestic stream, to the open sea.
He, on his side, driven hither and thither among strangers, sent forth from his home by destiny and the cruelty of man; embittered and grown ruder and ruder since earliest youth, though with— 299 —
