Ah God!  She was so beautiful and her love was so sweet and strong!  Her face had been as the face of an angel, and her virgin-heart as the innermost leaves of the rose that are folded together in the bud before the rising of the sun.  Her kiss was as the breath of spring that gladdens the earth into new life, her eyes as crystal wells, from the depths whereof truth rose blushing to the golden light of day.  Her lips were so sweet that a man wondered how they could ever part, till, when they parted, her gentle breath bore forth the music of her words, that was sweeter than all created sounds.  She was of all earthly women the most beautiful—­the very most lovely thing that God had made; and of all mortal women that have loved, her love had been the purest, the gentlest, the truest.  There was never woman like to her, nor would be again.

And yet—­scarce ten days had changed her, had so altered and disturbed the pure elements of her wondrous nature that she had lied to herself and lied to her lover the very lie of lies—­for what?  To wear a piece of purple of a richer dye than other women wore, to bind her hair with a bit of gold, to be called a queen—­a queen forsooth! when she had been from her birth up the sovereign queen of all created women!

The very lie of lies!  Was there ever such a monstrous lie since the world first learned the untruths of the serpent’s wisdom?  Had she not sworn and promised, by the holiness of her God, to love Zoroaster for ever?  For ever.  O word, that had meant heaven, and now meant hell!—­that had meant joy without any end and peace and all love!—­that meant now only pain eternal, and sorrow, and gnawing torment of a wound that would never heal!  O Death, that yesterday would have seemed Life for her!  O Life, that to-day, by her, was made the Death of deaths!

Emptiness of emptiness—­the whole world one hollow cavern of vanity—­lifeless and lightless, where the ghosts of the sorrows of men moan dismally, and the shadows of men’s griefs scream out their wild agony upon the ghastly darkness!  Night, through which no dawn shall ever gleam, fleet and fair, to touch with rosy fingers the eyes of a dead world and give them sight!  Winter, of unearthly cold, that through all the revolving ages of untiring time, shall never see the face of another spring, nor feel its icy veins thawing with the pulses of a forgotten life, quickened from within with the thrilling hope of a new and glorious birth!

Far out upon the southern plain Zoroaster lay upon the dew-wet ground and gazed up into the measureless depths of heaven, where the stars shone out like myriads of jewels set in the dark mantle of night!

Gradually, as he lay, the tempest of his heart subsided, and the calm of the vast solitude descended upon him, even as the dew had descended upon the earth.  His temples ceased to throb with the wild pulse that sent lightnings through his brain at every beat, and from the intensity of his sorrow, his soul seemed to float upwards to those cool depths of the outer firmament where no sorrow is.  His eyes grew glassy and fixed, and his body rigid in the night-dews; and his spirit, soaring beyond the power of earthly forces to weigh down its flight, rose to that lofty sphere where the morning and the evening are but one eternal day, where the mighty unison of the heavenly chorus sends up its grand plain-chant to God Most High.