But if he loved Atossa, she loved him as well.  She said so, cried it aloud upon the terrace where any one might have heard it.  Why then had he left the court, and hidden himself so long in the wilderness?  Why, before going out on his wanderings, had he disguised himself, and gone and stood where the procession passed, and hissed out a bitter insult as Nehushta went by?  For her sake he had abandoned his brilliant life these three years, to dwell in the desert, to grow so thin and miserable of aspect that he looked like an old man.  And his hair and beard were white—­she had heard that a man might turn white from sorrow in a day.  Was it grief that had so changed him?  Grief to see her wedded to the king before his eyes?  His voice rang so true:  “Ask her whom thou hatest,” he had said.  In truth she would ask.  It was all too inexplicable, and the sudden thought that she had perhaps wronged him three long years ago—­even the possibility of the thought that seemed so little possible to her yesterday—­wrought strangely in her breast, and terrified her.  She would ask Atossa to her face whether Zoroaster had loved her.  She would tell how she had seen them together upon the balcony, and heard Atossa’s quick, hot words.  She would threaten to tell the king; and if the elder queen refused to answer truth, she would indeed tell him and put her rival to a bitter shame.

She walked more quickly upon the smooth path, and her hands wrung each other, and once she felt the haft of that wicked Indian knife she ever wore.  When she turned back and went up the broad steps of the palace, the moon was rising above the far misty hills to eastward, and there were lights beneath the columned portico.  She paused and looked back across the peaceful valley, and far down below, a solitary nightingale called out a few melancholy notes, and then burst forth into glorious song.

Nehushta turned again to go in, and there were tears in her dark eyes, that had not stood there for many a long day.  But she clasped her hands together, and went forward between the crouching slaves, straight to Atossa’s apartment.  It was not usual for any one to gain access to the eider queen’s inner chambers without first obtaining permission, from Atossa herself, and Nehushta had never been there.  They met rarely in public, and spoke little, though each maintained the appearances of courtesy; but Atossa’s smile was the sweeter of the two.  In private they never saw each other; and the queen’s slaves would perhaps have tried to prevent Nehushta from entering, but her black eyes flashed upon them in such dire wrath as she saw them before her, that they crouched away and let her pass on unmolested.

Atossa sat, as ever at that hour in her toilet-chamber, surrounded by her tirewomen.  The room was larger than the one at Shushan, for she had caused it to be built after her own plans; but her table was the same as ever, and upon it stood the broad silver mirror, which she never allowed to be left behind when she travelled.