"'A son, Syed Ali, a son. Joy, joy, joy! And now, what do the stars say?'
"Was it cowardice, was it pity, was it sympathy for him in his long deferred happiness, that prompted me to act as I did? Even at this day I myself cannot answer the question. Perhaps it was just unthinkingly on the spur of the moment that I did what I did. Without a word I thrust into Mirza Shah's hand the roughly completed horoscope. There was no note in it of the flaming star that at the last had marred the favourable showing.
"Mirza Shah, under my instructions, had become skilled enough to interpret the general significance of such a diagram with its accompanying symbols.
"'Ah, my friend,' he exclaimed in fervent delight, 'this is indeed excellent. He will be clever and brave and handsome, everything that a father could wish. Get ready the emblazoned scroll at once. Now I shall go. There are others to whom to tell the glad news, and to your mistress even now shall I try to whisper the splendid omens the stars have traced for us here.'
"He tapped the rough chart with a forefinger, then handed it back to me, and was gone.
"Let my story hasten on, just as the years hastened on. The boy grew up to be a comely lad, much in my companionship, for he came to me to learn to read and write Persian and Arabic. But although I loved him well, never any single day did he come into my sight but my heart was smitten with self reproach. Why had I, by suppressing the truth, allowed this child to live even for an hour beyond the hour of his birth? The foreordained murderer of his good and noble father!—to my eyes the decree of fate was branded on the very brow of the boy.
"Yet did I console myself and justify myself. At times I even dared to indulge a doubting mood as to the certainty of the celestial writing of fate. Could a bright, open-faced child like this one seated at my knee, book in hand, ever come to commit the most abominable of human crimes—to slay his own dearly loving father?
"'Impossible!' I would murmur to myself, and would thus resolutely shut the gates of my heart to the whispering of conscience.
"But in any case it was now too late to speak. The boy was endeared to his father and to his mother, the idol of both their lives. Mirza Shah would have gladly died, well I knew, for his son. Why then should I interfere? Kismet! Let destiny take its course. Even I, in withholding the truth, had been an instrument in the hand of fate. And had it not been written that I should so act? Who, indeed, but Allah can change the course of events?
"By such arguments I became reconciled to abide with peace of mind the workings of destiny. And so years rolled on.