“‘Oh, yes, my dear,’ replied Uncle Robert, ‘you shall have the story, which is most important. For you must know that the spring is a magic spring, and the water in the flask is magic too, with most magical properties. The spring had its origin in the tears of an unfortunate young maiden named Zubaydah, who, on the very spot where it now flows, found the body of her lover Ghanim, cruelly slain. She fell on his breast, lamenting wildly, and when they tore him away from her embracing arms, she would not stir, but remained there, refusing drink and food alike, and weeping, weeping constantly, until in the end she too died. Their story is most pathetic and some day you shall hear it; but now it is of no further importance, save for the fact that when they bore her tenderly away, a spring was flowing from the ground she had so plentifully watered with her tears. And the water of that spring had this remarkable quality: that when a flask of it is jointly possessed by true lovers, so long as neither commits a crime against their mutual love, the water remains as you saw it, clear, sparkling, translucent; but should either of the lovers prove false to the other, the water becomes dark, thick, muddy--an ugly symbol of the wrong that has been done. “‘Always, even when I was quite young,’ concluded old Forsythe, ‘there was in my nature a strong materialistic strain--a strain of cynicism some said; but to me it seemed rather a strain of common sense, which enabled me to see things as they were, quite uninfluenced by the emotional disturbances which impaired the calm judgments of my fellows. So, though at this time I expected to marry and, of course, expected that my wife would be in love with me when we married, yet I was quite aware that there could be no guarantee that she would remain so. The value of a flask of this water to a person so able as myself to gaze without blinking upon the realities of life, was very evident. I should present it to my wife on our wedding day and tell her its story; and though I knew it could avail no more than anything else on this earth to keep me her love, yet I hoped that it might serve to guard me against those unpleasant little eccentricities of conduct which sometimes follow the death of conjugal affection. It was with this hope that I always preserved it, and it is with a similar hope on your behalf, my dear Robert, that I have presented you and Amy with the flask.’