In the garden of the Palace of the Fountain certain eunuchs answered a certain word and at night received a climber over the wall at the angle nearest the sea. When he came down among them they gave him a dress like their own, and one took colouring matter and darkened his face and changed its lines. Then he went with them, by the moonlight walks down which floated laughter and singing and the tinkling of castanets.
There stood a pavilion by a pool where lilies grew. Two slave-girls met the eunuchs here, and there followed whispering. Then the servitors of the seraglio stood aside, but the man who had climbed the wall went on. At the entrance of the pavilion he encountered a third slave-woman together with a black, as huge as Africa. These two also answered the sign he made, and quitting the doorway went and sat by the edge of the pool. Sadyattes came into the pavilion and the presence of Aryenis. She sat, veiled, in the moonlight.
“Did you bring that letter, Sadyattes, that through those in your pay, you said that you had to bring? I have here a lamp to read it by.” As she spoke she uncovered the small flame burning in a golden boat.
Sadyattes bent before her. “Pearl of the Deep! climbing the wall I came here, at the peril of my life, to show it—”
“And of mine. Well, show—”
Sadyattes put out his hand and touched her veil. “Do you remember, before you came to the Fountain Palace, to Meranes’s arms, do you remember, Aryenis, a diver whose hand might have gathered you where you lay at the bottom of the sea? But a wave turned him aside, as a wave brought you here!”
“I remember the diver, Sadyattes. But though I lay in the bottom of the sea, I was even there for none but Meranes! In water, in earth, in fire, in this time, in that time, in all times, I and Meranes have been, are, and will be for each other!”
“Nitetis—”
“Nitetis is mirage, false showing—”
“The false is best loved.”