Said he, 'Leave me not, my betrothed: what am I without thy counsel? And go not from me, or this adventure will come to miserable issue.' So she said, 'Thou beginnest to feel my worth?' He answered, 'O Noorna! was woman like thee before in this world? Surely 'tis a mask I mark thee under; yet art thou perforce of sheer wisdom and sweet manners lovely in my sight; and I have a thirst to hear thee and look on thee.' While he spake, a beam of struggling splendour burst from her, and she said, 'O thou dear youth, yes! I must even go. But I go glad of heart, knowing thee prepared to love me. I must go to counteract the machinations of Karaz, for he's at once busy, vindictive, and cunning, and there's no time for us to lose; so farewell, my betrothed, and make thy wits keen to know me when we next meet.' So he said, 'And I--whither go I?' She answered, 'To the City of Oolb straightway.' Then he, 'But I know not its bearing from this spot: how reach it?' She answered, 'What! thou with the phial of Paravid in thy vest, that endoweth, a single drop of it, the flowers, the herbage, the very stones and desert sands, with a tongue to articulate intelligible talk?' Said he, 'Is it so?' She answered, 'Even so.' Ere Slubli Bagarag could question her further she embraced him, and blew upon his eyes, and he was blinded by her breath, and saw not her departure, groping for a seat on the rocks, and thinking her still by him. Sight returned not to him till long after weariness had brought the balm of sleep upon his eyelids. THE TALKING HAWK Now, when he awoke he found himself alone in that place, the moon shining over the low meadows and flower-cups fair with night-dew. Odours of night-flowers were abroad, filling the cool air with deliciousness, and he heard in the gardens below songs of the bulbul: it was like a dream to his soul, and he lay somewhile contemplating the rich loveliness of the scene, that showed no moving thing. Then rose he and bethought him of the words of Noorna, and of the City of Oolb, and the phial of the waters of Paravid in his vest; and he drew it forth, and dropped a drop of it on the rock where he had reclined. A deep harmony seemed suddenly to awake inside the rock, and to his interrogation as to the direction of Oolb, he heard, 'The path of the shadows of the moon.' Thereupon he advanced to a prominent part of the rocks above the meadows, and beheld the shadows of the moon thrown forward into dimness across a waste of sand. And he stepped downward to the level of sand, and went the way of the shadows till it was dawn. Then dropped he a drop of the waters of the phial on a spike of lavender, and there was a voice said to him in reply to what he questioned, 'The path of the shadows of the sun.'