Darius stood quietly gazing at her with an expression of doubt and curiosity, that was almost amusing, on his stern, dark face.  Nehushta was frightened, and sprang to her feet with the graceful quickness of a startled deer.  She was indolent by nature, but as swift as light when she was roused by fear or excitement.

“Are you so unhappy in my palace?” asked Darius gently.  “Why are you weeping?  Who has hurt you?”

Nehushta turned her face away and dashed the tears from her eyes, while her cheeks flushed hotly.

“I am not weeping—­no one—­has hurt me,” she answered, in a voice broken rather by embarrassment and annoyance, than by the sorrow she had nearly forgotten in her sudden astonishment at being face to face with the king.

Darius smiled, and almost laughed, as he stroked his thick beard with his broad brown hand.

“Princess,” he said, “will you sit down again?  I will deliver you a discourse upon the extreme folly of ever telling”—­he hesitated—­“of saying anything which is not precisely true.”

There was something so simple and honest in his manner of speaking, that Nehushta almost smiled through her half-dried tears as she sat upon the cushions at the king’s feet.  He himself sat down upon the broad marble seat that ran round the eight-sided little building, and composing his face to a serious expression, that was more than half-assumed, began to deliver his lecture.

“I take it for granted that when one tells a lie, he expects to be believed.  There must, then, be some thing or circumstance which can help to make his lies credible.  Now, my dear princess, in the present instance, while I was looking you in the face and counting the tears upon your very beautiful cheeks, you deliberately told me that you were not weeping.  There was, therefore, not even the shadow of a thing, or circumstance which could make what you said credible.  It is evident that what you said was not true.  Is it not so?”

Nehushta could not help smiling as she looked up and saw the kindly light in the king’s dark eyes.  She thought she understood he was amusing her for the sake of giving her time to collect herself, and in spite of the determined intention of marrying her he had so lately expressed, she felt safe with him.

“The king lives for ever,” she answered, in the set phrase of assent common at the court.

“It is very probable,” replied Darius gravely.  “So many people say so, that I should have to believe all mankind liars if that were not true.  But I must return to your own particular case.  It would have been easy for you not to have said what you did.  I must therefore suppose that in going out of the way to make an attempt to deceive me in the face of such evidence—­by saying you were not weeping when the tears were actually falling from those very soft eyes of yours—­you had an object to gain.  Men employ truth and falsehood for much the same reason:  A man who does not