“It is long since we have met, Zoroaster,” she said quickly.  “Tell me of your life in that wild fortress.  You have prospered in your profession of arms—­you wear the royal chain.”  She put up her hand and touched the links as though to feel them.  “Indeed it is very like the chain Darius wore when he went to Babylon the other day.”  She paused a moment as though trying to recall something; then continued:  “Yes—­now I think of it, he had no chain when he came back.  It is his—­of course—­why has he given it to you?” Her tones had a tinge of uncertainty in the question,—­half imperious, as demanding an answer, half persuading, as though not sure the answer would be given.  Zoroaster remembered that intonation of her sweet voice, and he smiled in his beard.

“Indeed,” he answered, “the Great King who liveth for ever, put this chain about my neck with his own hands last night, when he halted by the roadside, as a reward, I presume, for certain qualities he believeth his servant Zoroaster to possess.”

“Qualities—­what qualities?”

“Nay, the queen cannot expect me to sing faithfully my own praises.  Nevertheless, I am ready to die for the Great King.  He knoweth that I am.  May he live for ever!”

“It may be that one of the qualities was the successful performance of the extremely difficult task you have lately accomplished,” said Atossa, with a touch of scorn.

“A task?” repeated Zoroaster.

“Yes—­have you not brought a handful of Hebrew women all the way from Ecbatana to Shushan, through numberless dangers and difficulties, safe and sound, and so carefully prudent of their comfort that they are not even weary, nor have they once hungered or thirsted by the way, nor lost the smallest box of perfume, nor the tiniest of their golden hair-pins?  Surely you have deserved to have a royal chain hung about your neck and to be called the king’s friend.”

“The reward was doubtless greater than my desert.  It was no great feat of arms that I had to perform; and yet, in these days a man may leave Media under one king, and reach Shushan under another.  The queen knoweth better than any one what sudden changes may take place in the empire,” answered Zoroaster, looking calmly into her face as he stood; and she who had been the wife of Cambyses and the wife of the murdered Gomata-Smerdis, and who was now the wife of Darius, looked down and was silent, turning over in her beautiful hands the sealed scroll she bore.

The sun had risen higher while they talked, and his rays were growing hot in the clear air.  The mist had lifted from the city below, and all the streets and open places were alive with noisy buyers and sellers, whose loud talking and disputing came up in a continuous hum to the palace on the hill, like the drone of a swarm of bees.  The queen rose from her seat.

“It is too warm here,” she said, and she once more moved toward the stairway.  Zoroaster followed her respectfully, still holding his helmet in his hand.  Atossa did not speak till she reached the threshold.  Then, as Zoroaster bowed low before her, she paused and looked at him with her clear, deep-blue eyes.