“Yes, the Great King is very gracious to the ladies of the court,” she said.  “You are so beautiful and so different from them all that he will certainly talk long with you after the banquet this evening—­when he has drunk much wine.”  The last words were added with a most special sweetness of tone.

Nehushta’s face flushed a little as she drank more sherbet before she answered.  Then, letting her soft dark eyes rest, as though in admiration, upon the queen’s face, she spoke in a tone of gentle deprecation: 

  "Shall a man prefer the darkness of night to the
       glories of risen day? 
    Or shall a man turn from the lilies to pluck the
       lowly flower of the field?"

“You know our poets, too?” exclaimed Atossa, pleased with the graceful tone of the compliment, but still looking at Nehushta with curious eyes.  There was a self-possession about the Hebrew princess that she did not like; it was as though some one had suddenly taken a quality of her own and made it theirs and displayed it before her eyes.  There was indeed this difference, that while Atossa’s calm and undisturbed manner was generally real, Nehushta’s was assumed, and she herself felt that, at any moment, it might desert her at her utmost need.

“So you know our poets?” repeated the queen, and this time she laughed lightly.  “Indeed I fear the king will talk to you more than ever, for he loves poetry, I daresay Zoroaster, too, has repeated many verses to you in the winter evenings at Ecbatana.  He used to know endless poetry when he was a boy.”

This time Nehushta looked at the queen, and wondered how she, who could not be more than two or three and twenty years old, although now married to her third husband, could speak of having known Zoroaster as a boy, seeing that he was past thirty years of age.  She turned the question upon the queen.

“You must have seen Zoroaster very often before he left Shushan,” she said.  “You know him so well.”

“Yes—­every one knew him.  He was the favourite of the court, with his beauty and his courage and his strange affection for that old—­for the old Hebrew prophet.  That is why Cambyses sent them both away,” added she with a light laugh.  “They were far too good, both of them, to be endured among the doings of those times.”

Atossa spoke readily enough of Cambyses.  Nehushta wondered whether she could be induced to speak of Smerdis.  Her supposed ignorance of the true nature of what had occurred in the last few months would permit her to speak of the dead usurper with impunity.

“I suppose there have been great changes lately in the manners of the court—­during this last year,” suggested Nehushta carelessly.  She pulled a raisin from the dry stem, and tried to peel it with her delicate fingers.