Atossa, for the first time in her whole life, turned pale to the lips and trembled, for she already seemed to taste death in the air.  But even then, her boldness did not desert her, and she rose to her feet with a stateliness and a calmness that almost awed the king’s anger to silence.

“Slay me if thou wilt,” she said in a low voice, but firmly.  “I am innocent of this deed.”  The great lie fell from her lips with a calmness that a martyr might have envied.  But Zoroaster stepped between her and the king.  As he passed her, his clear, calm eyes met hers for a moment.  He read in her face the fear of death, and he pitied her.

“Let the king hear me,” he said.  “It is not Phraortes who has headed the revolt, and it is told me that Phraortes has fled from Ecbatana.  Let the king send forth his armies and subdue the rebels, and let this woman go; for the fear of death is upon her and it may be that she has not sinned in this matter.  And if she have indeed sinned, will the king make war upon women, or redden his hands with the blood of his own wife?”

“You speak as a priest—­I feel as a man,” returned the king, savagely.  “This woman has deserved death many times—­let her die.  So shall we be free of her.”

“It is not lawful to do this thing,” returned Zoroaster coldly, and his glance rested upon the angry face of Darius, as he spoke, and seemed to subdue his furious wrath.  “The king cannot know whether she have deserved death or not, until he have the rebels of Ecbatana before him.  Moreover, the blood of a woman is a perpetual shame to the man who has shed it.”

The king seemed to waver, and Atossa, who watched him keenly, understood that the moment had come in which she might herself make an appeal to him.  In the suddenness of the situation she had time to ask herself why Zoroaster, whom she had so bitterly injured, should intercede for her.  She could not understand his nobility of soul, and she feared some trap, into which she should fall by and by.  But, meanwhile, she chose to appeal to the king’s mercy herself, lest she should feel that she owed her preservation wholly to Zoroaster.  It was a bold thought, worthy of a woman of her strength, in a moment of supreme danger.

With a quick movement she tore the tiara from her head and let it fall upon the floor.  The mass of her silken hair fell all about her like a vesture of gold, and she threw herself at the king’s feet, embracing his knees with a passionate gesture of appeal.  Her face was very pale, and the beauty of it seemed to grow by the unnatural lack of colour, while her soft blue eyes looked up into the king’s face with such an expression of imploring supplication that he was fain to acknowledge to himself that she moved his heart, for she had never looked so fair before.  She spoke no word, but held his knees, and as she gazed, two beautiful great tears rolled slowly from under her eyelids, and trembled upon her pale, soft cheeks, and her warm, quick breath went up to his face.