The two spearmen turned quickly upon the man between them, who had uttered the insult against the new queen, and laid hold of him roughly by the shoulders.  A moment more and his life would have been ended by their swords.  But his strong, white hands stole out like lightning, and seized each soldier by the wrist, and twisted their arms so suddenly and with such furious strength, that they cried aloud with pain and fell headlong at his feet.  The people parted for a space in awe and wonder, and Zoroaster turned, with his dark mantle close drawn around him, and strode out through the gaping crowd.

“It is a devil of the mountains!” cried one.

“It is Ahriman himself!” said another.

“It is the soul of the priest of Bel whom the king slew at Babylon!”

“It is the Evil Sprit of Cambyses!”

“Nay,” quoth one of the spearmen, rubbing his injured hand, “it was Zoroaster, the captain.  I saw his face beneath that hood he wore.”

“It may be,” answered his fellow.  “They say he can break a bar of iron, as thick as a man’s three fingers, with his hand.  But I believe it was a devil of the mountains.”

But the procession marched on, and long before the crowd had recovered enough from its astonishment to give utterance to these surmises, Zoroaster had passed out of the porch and back through the deserted courts, and down the wide staircase to the palace gate, and out into the quiet, starlit night, alone and on foot.

He would have no compromise with his grief; he would be alone with it.  He needed not mortal sympathy and he would not have the pity of man.  The blow had struck home with deadly certainty and the wound was such as man cannot heal, neither woman.  The fabric of happiness, which in a year he had built himself, was shattered to its foundation, and the fall of it was fearful.  The ruin of it reached over the whole dominion of his soul and rent all the palace of his body.  The temple that had stood so fair, whither his heart had gone up to worship his beloved one, was destroyed and utterly beaten to pieces; and the ruin of it was as a heap of dead bones, so loathsome in decay, that the eyes of his spirit turned in horror and disgust from the inward contemplation of so miserable a sight.

Alone and on foot, he went upon his dreary way, dry-eyed and calm.  There was nothing left of all his past life that he cared for.  His armour hung in his chamber in the palace and with it he left the Zoroaster he had known—­the strong, the young, the beautiful; the warrior, the lover, the singer of sweet songs, the smiter of swift blows, the peerless horseman, the matchless man.  He who went out alone into the great night, was a moving sorrow, a horror of grief made visible as a walking shadow among things real, a man familiar already with death as with a friend, and with the angel of death as with a lover.

Alone—­it was a beginning of satisfaction to be away from all the crowd of known and unknown faces familiar to his life—­but the end and attainment of satisfaction could only come when he should be away from himself, from the heavy body that wearied him, and from the heavier soul that was crushed with itself as with a burden.  For sorrow was his companion from that day forth, and grief undying was his counsellor.