ample
purple cloak, his sword was by his side, and on his head he wore the
pointed helmet, richly inlaid with gold, bearing in front the winged
wheel which the sovereigns of the Persian empire had assumed after the
conquest of Assyria. His very tall and graceful body seemed planned to
combine the greatest possible strength with the most surpassing
activity, and in his whole presence there breathed the consciousness of
ready and elastic power, the graceful elasticity of a steel bow always
bent, the inexpressible ease of motion and the matchless swiftness that
men had when the world was young--that wholeness of harmonious
proportion which alone makes rest graceful, and the inactivity of
idleness itself like a mode of perfect motion. As they stood there
together, the princess of Judah and the noble Persian, they were wholly
beautiful and yet wholly contrasted--the Semite and the Aryan, the dark
race of the south, on which the hot air of the desert had breathed for
generations in the bondage of Egypt, and left its warm sign-manual of
southern sunshine,--and the fair man of the people whose faces were
already set northwards, on whom the north breathed already its icy
fairness, and magnificent coldness of steely strength.

"Are you glad, my beloved?" asked Zoroaster again, looking up and laying
his right hand on the princess's arm. She had given no answer to his
question, but only gazed dreamily out over the river.

She seemed about to speak, then paused again, then hesitated and
answered his question by another.

"Zoroaster--you love me," again she paused, and, as he passionately
seized her hands and pressed his lips to them, she said softly, turning
her head away, "What is love?"

He, too, waited one moment before he answered, and, standing to his
lordly height, took her head between his hands and pressed it to his
breast; then, with one arm around her, he stood looking eastward and
spoke:

"Listen, my beloved, and I, who love you, will tell you what love is. In
the far-off dawn of the soul-life, in the ethereal distance of the outer
firmament, in the mist of the star-dust, our spirits were quickened with
the spirit of God, and found one another, and met. Before earth was for
us, we were one; before time was for us, we were one--even as we shall
be one when there is no time for us any more. Then Ahura Mazda, the
all-wise God, took our two souls from among the stars, and set them in
the earth, clothed for a time with