The queen looked keenly at Darius, but her lips smiled gently.  The thought crossed her mind that the king perhaps knew something of what had passed between her and Nehushta nearly a year before, with regard to a certain Indian dagger.  The knives the juggler tossed in the air reminded her of it by their shape.  But the king laughed gaily and she answered without hesitation: 

“I would it were true, for then I could be not only the king’s wife, but the king’s juggler!”

“I meant not so,” laughed Darius.  “The two would hardly suit one another.”

“And yet, I need more skill than this Indian fellow, to be the king’s wife,” answered the queen slowly.

“Said I not so?”

“Nay—­but you meant not so,” replied Atossa, looking down.

“What I say, I mean,” he returned.  “You need all the fairness of your face to conceal the evil in your heart, as this man needs all his skill in handling those sharp knives, that would cut off his fingers if, unawares, he touched the wrong edge of them.”

“I conceal nothing,” said the queen, with a light laugh.  “The king has a thousand eyes—­how should I conceal anything from him?”

“That is a question which I constantly ask myself,” answered Darius.  “And yet, I often think I know your thoughts less well than those of the black girl who fans you when you are hot, and whose attention is honestly concentrated upon keeping the flies from your face—­or of yonder stolid spearmen at the door, who watch us, and honestly wish they were kings and queens, to lie all day upon a silken couch, and watch the tricks of a paid conjurer.”

As Darius spoke, the guards he glanced at turned suddenly and faced each other, standing on each side of the doorway, and brought their heavy spears to the ground with a ringing noise.  In a moment the tall, thin figure of Zoroaster, in his white robes, appeared between them.  He stopped respectfully at the threshold, waiting for the king to notice him, for, in spite of his power and high rank, he chose to maintain rigidly the formalities of the court.

Darius made a sign and the juggler caught his whirling knives, one after the other, and thrust them into his bag, and withdrew.

“Hail, Zoroaster!” said the king.  “Come near and sit beside me, and tell me your business.”

Zoroaster came forward and made a salutation, but he remained standing, as though the matter on which he came were urgent.

“Hail, king, and live for ever!” he said.  “I am a bearer of evil news.  A rider has come speeding from Ecbatana, escaped from the confusion.  Media has revolted, and the king’s guards are besieged within the fortress of Ecbatana.”

Darius sat upright upon the edge of his couch; the knotted veins upon his temples swelled with sudden anger and his brow flushed darkly.

“Doubtless it is Phraortes who has set himself up as king,” he said.  Then, suddenly and fiercely, he turned upon Atossa.  “Now is your hour come,” he cried in uncontrollable anger.  “You shall surely die this day, for you have done this, and the powers of evil shall have your soul, which is of them, and of none other.”