Seven is a perfect number, and all the Easterns take it into consideration, and it is a law that no one shall reveal a secret that they may have found until three times seven years pass over their heads.

Thus it was, while we eagerly sought for the mysterious power I have mentioned, we were buoyed up by the hope that, though we might not be successful, Ilfra would reveal to us what we desired to know." "And thus the time passed on until we reached Ilfra's twenty-first birthday, with the exception of seven days.

Both Abou and I were glad at heart; for although the secret, to me, would be as nothing compared to what it would be to him, yet I could put it to some use, while, to him, it would dispel distance, time, and physical life.

Through it the secrets of astronomer and astrologer would be known, while the pages of the past would lie before him like an open book.
"Judge his anguish then, and my disappointment, when, seven days before her twenty-first birthday, she was bitten by a cerastes, and her body died.

Had she been near her home, her knowledge would have defied the powers of this most deadly serpent's bite; for she knew antidotes for every poison.