The tale he tells is said to be "familiar to students of medieval Persian prose," and a considerable amount of commentary has accumulated around it.
Some time later, after long brooding, the Prince announces his intention to renounce all further commerce with women and devote his life to constructing a monument to his beloved, to be known as the Pearl of Love.
His architectural sophistication increases, and he realizes "new possibilities in arch and wall and buttress," develops a "finer and colder" "sense of colour", and, wearying "altogether of carvings and pictures and inlaid ornamentation", has them "put aside".
He returns with "an architect and two master craftsmen and a small retinue" and then, after long, silent deliberation—"no one knew the thoughts that passed through his mind"—he points at his wife’s sarcophagus and says, "Take that thing away.
In 1927 Wells told the Sunday Express that "The Pearl of Love" and "The Country of the Blind" were his favorites among the stories he had written.