Zoroaster smiled to himself in the dusk, but he would not have had the princess see he was amused.

“It shall be as you please,” he said; “we shall soon know how it will end, for we must begin our journey to-morrow.”

“It will need three weeks, will it not?” asked Nehushta.

“Yes—­it is at least one hundred and fifty farsangs.  It would weary you to travel more than seven or eight farsangs in a day’s journey—­indeed, that is a long distance for any one.”

“We shall always be together, shall we not?” asked the princess.

“I will ride beside your litter, my beloved,” said Zoroaster.  “But it will be very tedious for you, and you will often be tired.  The country is very wild in some parts, and we must trust to what we can take with us for our comfort.  Do not spare the mules, therefore, but take everything you need.”

“Besides, we may not return,” said Nehushta thoughtfully.

Her companion was silent.  “Do you think we shall ever come back?” she asked presently.

“I have dreamed of coming back,” answered Zoroaster; “but I fear it is to be even as you say.”

“Why say you that you fear it!  Is it not better to live at the court than here in this distant fortress, so shut off from the world that we might almost as well be among the Scythians?  Oh, I long for the palace at Shushan!  I am sure it will seem tenfold more beautiful now than it did when I was a child.”

Zoroaster sighed.  In his heart he knew there was to be no returning to Media, and yet he had dreamed of marrying the princess and being made governor of the province, and bringing his wife home to this beautiful land to live out a long life of quiet happiness.  But he knew it was not to be; and though he tried hard to shake off the impression, he felt in his inmost self that the words of the dying prophet foretold truly what would happen to him.  Only he hoped that there was an escape, and the passion in his heart scorned the idea that in loving Nehushta he was being led astray, or made to abandon the right path.

The cold breeze blew steadily from the east, with a chill dampness in it, sighing wearily among the trees.  The summer was not yet wholly come, and the after-breath of the winter still made itself felt from time to time.  The lovers parted, taking leave of the spot they loved so well,—­Zoroaster with a heavy foreboding of evil to come; Nehushta with a great longing for the morrow, a mad desire to be on the way to Shushan.

Something in her way of speaking had given Zoroaster a sense of pain.  Her interest in the court and in the Great King, the strange capricious hatred that seemed already forming in her breast against Atossa, the evident desire she betrayed to take part in the brilliant life of the capital,—­indeed, her whole manner troubled him.  It seemed so unaccountable that she should be angry with him for his conduct at the burial of the prophet, that he almost thought she had wished to take advantage of a trifle for the sake of annoying him.  He felt that doubt which never comes so suddenly and wounds so keenly as when a man feels the most certain of his position and of himself.