'Oh me!' she cried, 'what shame has come upon me? Yet, by Allah! he is so beautiful that I love him to distraction.' Then, after crying out the utmost words of love to his unheeding spirit, she fell to kissing his hands, whereupon she found to her amazement that her ring was upon his finger and a strange one upon her own. 'I know not,' cried she at last, 'but it seemeth we are married.' And with that she sighed with content, and, nestling to his side, fell under the Efreets' spell of sleep.
At a loss, even now, to decide which was the more beautiful, the Efreets agreed to waive their difference, and Dahnash, at the bidding of Meymooneh, raised _Badoura_ in his arms and sped through space to China.
When waking came with morning light the case with _Badoura_ was like that with Camaralzaman, save that the former, having quitted her couch, forgot it, whereas the latter was clearly certain he had not quitted his. Each discovered the other's ring bestowed in exchange. Each thrilled at the meaning of this pledge, which proved their meeting to have been no baseless dream. Each swore by Allah that a fiendish trick had been played at dead of night,--not in the wedding of them in their sleep, but in the snatching of them asunder before waking. _Badoura_ wailed for her husband; Camaralzaman rose in wrath and demanded his stolen wife. There was trouble in China and in Khaledan that day, and in each kingdom a sorrowful king wept for the madness of his first-born.
For three long years the pair nursed their love in separation and confinement. Camaralzaman was sent in splendid exile to a palace by the sea, but the wide expanse of waters only afforded him the greater space for the longing which consumed him. He could not know that, far across the ocean, the one he longed for was sitting, chained by the neck with a golden chain, there at the window of her palace tower--chained and guarded lest in her supposed madness she should hurl her body in the wake of her soul which rushed to meet him from afar. He could not know that her father, the king, had invited the astrologers and wise men to cure his daughter of her malady, the reward of success being her hand and half his kingdom, the punishment of failure the forfeiture of life; nay, he might even have rejoiced to know that already forty heads, relieved of wisdom, decked the walls of Gaiour's palace. Yet, O King of the Age, through the virtues of the talisman he was led thither to see and know.