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CLASSIC
cool gloom behind him comes a tall figure, with a handsome face already blurred with wine-bibbing, parchment in his hand. “My father!"
“When will you give over this folly ?” the tentmaker’s voice cracks with rage as he spits upon the paper in his son’s hand ; “where are your sons who should be a pride to my old age?"
“Allah who doeth all things well knows." Omar Khayyam shrugs, tho a shadow of old pain falls across his face. Shireen ! Shircen — oh, the velvet of your lips, the touch of your small hand —
“When you left off studying I had hopes that you might be worth something after all,” the tentmaker continues, “but you do nothing but make marks upon paper all day and drink in the taverns all night, and what is more your strange ideas will get you into trouble yet. It is not lawful to differ with the Sages.”
“What do they know of Life?" asks Omar scornfully; “they sit all day shut away from the World. One hour within the tavern or the bazaar where men live and work and suffer would teach them more than all their dusty tomes !”
The ' bells of the city begin to ring the hour of prayer. From the mosque the Muezzin calls the Faithful to give thanks to Allah, the only God. Omar Khayyam lifts his face to the blank bowl of the sky. “Why?” he asks bitterly. “Why!”
The old tentmaker is dead, the needle which he clutched until the last buried in his stiffened fingers, and Omar sits alcne at the window of his house close to the Great Gate of Nishapur. It is night. The air seems to throb with the ecstasies of a thousand lovers. Some
one sings to the beating of a lute. “The ringing of thine bracelets has taken away my senses ”
Along the street crawls a‘ curious shadow, distorted in the light of the lantern hung above the door. A stealthy tap upon the panels, a whisper — “Dwells here Omar who was once a student of Imam, Teacher of the Holy Word?”
The oil lamp fills the room with soft glow, lights the face of the boy who has entered, and Omar gives a cry as he recognizes Mahruss, the page of Shiret?n. All the false composure of philosophy falls from the soul of Shireen’s lover like a cloak as he questions hoarsely: “What of her? What of your Lady ?”
Mahruss gives a whimper. He is only a child and very weary, his arms sagging under the weight of the strange looking bundle he carries. “She is dead.”
Dead ! Omar stands stricken. Dead — she
“Ah, Love! Could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits — and then Remold it nearer to the Heart’s desire!”
( Fifty-sevenj