HOW HADIJEH CAME TO HER MOTHER'S HOUSE AFTER HER MARRIAGE, AND HOW SHE MET VALEH THERE

OH you who through love have looked on sorrow, let not your heart be withered in despair. Love is: and for him who turns not back from love's path, hope reveals his rain­bow: the tears of lovers are not in vain: the night of sorrow will put on the garment of morning: oh, slaves of love, pain is love's sharp medicine: you who know not pain, enter not into love's dwelling, remain without the door. Every heart that falls into love's hands he makes it as wax, though it were iron: by his fire he purges it: by pain he melts it, and in his hands he moulds it to the shape he wills.

They say that when Valeh's heart was bitten by the fang of separation, his beloved knew of his miserable state; and the fire that burned him scorched her too. And one came to her mother and said: “So the fair moon, your daughter, once the brightness and glory of your house, is pining and fading in her husband's home like a torch at the head of a grave.” And when the mother heard she was faint for sorrow, and sent to her son-in-law saying that Hadijeh's mother yearned for her daughter. “Surely,” said she, “I grieve for my spiteful tongue: forget what has passed, and let my fair one lighten my home for a few days' space.” And when her husband heard the message, he durst not refuse: and so, like Joseph out of prison, came Hadijeh from her husband's house and became again the light of her mother's eyes.

And Valeh heard news of her coming: and like a flood in spring he rushed to the place, a very torrent of love. The moth flew to the candle, the nightingale found the garden, the fish sprang into the water, the motes met in the sunbeam. And when his eyes fell on Hadijeh's face, even as the dews of morning when the sun falls on them, neither his heart nor his eyes remained to him: thought and life were but as a mirror* to reflect the splendour of his love: drunk with the wine of her beauty he staggered and fell.

And when Hadijeh saw him thus struck down, for pity of herself and him her fears burst forth: she drew near the fallen man—fell from her hand the bridle of patience! Like a cloud her shadow fell on him, like the rain in spring her tears fell on him.

Then Valeh awoke, and his eyes were opened, and he saw the face of his beloved.

[Written in the margin in Valeh's handwriting: “I awoke and saw her who is my life. And as the sick man dies when Death summons him, so lived I at the voice of my love.”]

And Hadijeh looked and Hadijeh smiled, and strove with smile and look to make amends. And there they sat together, as close as body and soul—and they spoke, though their lips were closed. And their hearts were full within them: but their tongues were bound. And at last they broke silence and would have spoken of love: they wandered together in love's garden, but in that garden gathered no flowers.

This is the world's way: to mix the sweetest draught with the deadliest poison.