wind blowing from the direction of Buthayna's encampment, and when dawn appeared he would depart.

He went out one day to visit Buthayna and halted near the water, watching for a slave girl of Buthayna's or a shepherdess

to make her a go-between for delivering his message. And behold, an Abyssinian slave woman, carrying a waterskin, came down to the pool to fill it — and she knew him. When each had recognized the other, she greeted him and sat with him, and he began to talk with her and ask her for news of Buthayna, telling her what he suffered from the pain of separation and charging her with his message to Buthayna. Then he gave her his ring and asked her to hand it to her, and took from her a promise to return to him, and stayed waiting for her return. The slave girl went back to her people, having delayed long upon them. Buthayna's father, her husband, and her brother met her and asked her what had kept her; she evaded them and told them nothing of what had passed between her and Jamil, making excuses to them. So they beat her cruelly, and under the pain of the beating she told them how she had met Jamil, and handed over his ring to them.

It chanced that while she was in that plight two young men of the Banu 'Udhra passed by; they heard the story and learned the place where Jamil was. Wishing to ward this danger off from him, they said to the people: 'If you meet Jamil when Buthayna is not with him, and then kill him, every evil consequence will fall upon you.' Now Buthayna's people were the mightiest of the Banu 'Udhra; so they summoned the slave woman, gave her the ring, and ordered her to deliver it to Buthayna, warning her against telling her that they had learned the story. She did so, and Buthayna knew nothing of what had happened. The two young men went off and warned Jamil, saying: 'Stay with us in our tents until the pursuit dies down; then we will

send word to her, and she will visit you, and you can go your way safe and sound.' He said: 'For now, send her someone to warn her.' They brought him a shepherdess of hers and said to him, 'State your errand.' He said: 'Go in to her and say to her: I meant to hunt a gazelle, but a company of men put it on its guard, and so it escaped me tonight.' She went and told her what he had said to her; Buthayna recognized his story, searched into it, and understood it completely, and she did not go out to visit him that night. They watched her, and she never stirred from her place; and they went tracking him and found his she-camel, and knew that he had eluded them. Then they grew loath to kill him, fearing that a war might break out between them and his people over his blood — for his people were stronger in battle than Buthayna's. So they renewed their complaint against him to the Caliph, who sought him relentlessly, and he fled to Yemen, where he stayed for a time, until that governor was removed. Buthayna's people had meanwhile moved toward the region of Syria, and he came back to them; whereupon the elders of the encampment complained of him to his father — a man of standing, merit, and worth among his people. They adjured him by God and by the ties of kinship, and begged him to restrain his son from their girl, from singing of her, and from the scandal he was bringing upon them among the people. He promised to restrain and check him as far as he was able.

Then they departed. He sum-moned him and said to him: 'My son, how long will you be blind in your error? Are you not ashamed to cling to a wedded woman while you are kept far from her — she deluding you with her words and her wiles, showing you constancy and affection, while she harbors for her husband what a freeborn woman harbors for the man who possesses her, so that her talk to you is mere dallying and deception; and when you leave her, she goes back

to her husband? This is humiliation and disgrace, and I know of no arrow more futile nor life more wasted than yours. I adjure you by God: desist, and consider your case, for you know that what I have said is true. Were there any way to her, I would spend all I own upon her; but this is a matter that has failed, and he for whom it was fated holds it fast — and among women there are others in her stead.'

Jamil said to him: 'The judgment is as you have judged, and the word is as you have said. But have you ever seen anyone before me who was able to thrust his passion out of his heart, or had the power to console himself, or could avert what has been decreed for him? By God, if I could blot her memory from my heart, or remove her image from my eyes, I would do it. But there is no way to that. It is an affliction with which I have been tried, until a term appointed for me. Yet I will refrain from approaching this encampment or coming near it, though I should die of grief. That is my utmost effort and the limit of what I am able to do.' And he rose weeping; and his father wept, and all who were present, in sorrow at what they saw of his love for Buthayna.

It is said that when the news of Jamil's death reached Buthayna, she mourned him for three days; then her own end overtook her.