"And none dare to enter since Death lurked unseen in the thickets, and serpents, her kinsmen, slid swift to the threshold to guard it, and watched with still eyes her command.
"'It was witchcraft,' they said, with a shudder, those fortunate women, yet came in the dusk for her charms!
"But she gave them not always, for years brought her wisdom. She learnt the love lore of the flowers, the close starry heart of the jasmine, the open red heart of the rose, told their dream of fair death through the ripening of seed, and her voice would grow bitter with scorn....
"'Go! find your own lures for your lovers--I work for the seed--for the harvest of men.'
"High perched on the wall of the city the balcony women waxed wroth. It was money to them till the cripple who fought them with flowers prevailed in the battle for life to the world.
"And Narghiza, the chief of them all, felt her youth on the wane....
"So, one night in the darkness, ere dawning, men crept to the garden where only the women might enter. Men, heated by wine and by lust, inflamed by the balcony lies--yea! the witch who wrought evil to all--who had killed Gulanâr in her prime by a wasting--whose frown was a curse, must be reckoned with, killed, and her devilish chamber destroyed.
"But the sound of the rustling leaves as the snakes slid soft in the darkness made even the wine bibbers think, so that secret and soft as the snakes in the thickets they crept back to safety; till there--in the darkness, the fragrance of flowers, but one man remained, a man who grew old! Beautiful, tired of the life he had squandered, and reckless, yet angered because of the girl who had wasted to death--a girl he had paid for.
"'Cowards!' he said with a smile, and crept on in the dark. A rustle, but not of a snake! In the leaves a faint glimmer of white, and a voice--such a beautiful voice!
"'In this garden of women what seek you, my lord?'