Not without haste, she assured him that she would consider her question answered, and enquired, "Does it become thee to risk so wise a head at the bidding of so foolish a heart?" "It lay not, and does not lie, with me to make it becoming." This answer did not appear to please her, for, moving her head, she proceeded with an instant change of tone, "One thing I have ever desired to know. What is the secret of the smile of the Sphinx?" He was taken aback. "What? Canst thou not answer, thou who didst assert that thou hadst in thy bosom the answer to all secrets, O Very Veracious one?" Seeing her smiling, he replied, "I have not seen the Sphinx unless I see her now." "I perceive that thou canst not answer. Yet because of thy youth and thy beauty I will spare thee." "Spare me not, since before thou hast not spared me." "Upon one condition:--that shouldst thou wish again to see me thou shalt bring with thee the secret of the Sphinx's smile. And now, before thou leavest me, because thou wert not as insensible as most scribes are wont to be, but wast willing to assay to gain some knowledge of perfection from life as well as from thy scrolls, I will give thee a token to take with thee." At these words, as if some beneficent and invisible djinn had escaped from his bottle, a spirit of strange sweetness seemed to fill the room. Strength forsook the body of Es-siddeeh. "Come hither," she murmured. So Es-siddeeh went to her and bowed down with his face to the floor. Then the Princess took him very gently in her arms and, raising his head, placed one hand beneath his locks and the other over his eyes, and so kissed him. Now when Es-siddeeh felt the touch of her hands, cool as water lilies upon him; smelled the delicate smell of her bosom, more mysterious than any perfume of the mages; tasted her mouth's nectar, more precious than the combed honey of the blessed in Paradise, then indeed he knew there to be such a seal coldly pressed upon his heart that the stamp of it would not be erased all the days of his life. "Ah, merciless," said he, "thou hast indeed not spared me. Now must I inevitably return." "It was for that reason I gave it thee," she said. II. He hurried home. He sold all his belongings. His father, seeing him about to depart, cried, "Thou wilt break thy mother's heart." He could not reply. His mother, watching him set out upon his mule with a slender bag of coin in his hands, cursed him and the Princess. He did not look back. III. After a journey of three moons he arrived before the Sphinx.