block, and counting with eager finger, to see that for sure thirty-six deep notches were carved on it side by side. And she had amused herself with artful pretence of fright, imagining that perhaps she miscounted, and that perhaps one of them was still wanting, so that again, and still again, and every time she might delight in the glorious certainty that without a shadow of doubt three times twelve moons had passed by since Saïdyah saw her for the last time.
She also, seeing it already grow so light, would strain her eyes with vain endeavour to bend her glances beyond the horizon, that they might meet the sun, the laggard sun, that tarried . . . tarried . . .
Then came a line of bluish red, that fixed itself upon the clouds, and their rims grew light and glowing, and the lightning flashed, and again fiery arrows shot through the expanse, but this time they did not fall, they settled firmly on the dark background, and communicated their glow in ever larger and larger circles, and met crossing, swinging, winding, straying, and they united into fire sheaves, and flashed in golden gleams on a sky of nacre, and there were red, and blue, and yellow, and silver, and purple, and azure in it all . . . O, God! that was the dawn; that was the coming of Adinda!
Saïdyah had not learnt to pray, and it would have been a pity to teach him, for holier prayer and thanksgiving more fervent than was found in the speechless ecstasy of his soul would be impossible to express in human language.
He wished not to go to Badoor. The actual meeting with Adinda in itself appeared to him less glorious than the certainty that presently he would meet her again. He sat down at the foot of the ketapan, and let his eyes stray about the landscape. Nature smiled on him and seemed to bid him welcome as a mother her returned child. And just as such a one depicts her joy by a deliberate remembrance of past sorrow in showing what she had preserved as a keepsake during absence, thus also Saïdyah derived pleasure from seeing again so many spots that had witnessed his short life. But
