eisure which Zoroaster's position allowed him,
Daniel sought to bring the intelligence of the soldier-philosopher to
the perfection of its final development. Living, as he did, entirely in
his tower, save when, at rare intervals, he caused himself to be carried
down to the gardens, the prophet knew little of what went on in the
palace below, so that he sometimes marvelled that his pupil's attention
wandered, and that his language betrayed occasionally a keener interest
in his future, and in the possible vicissitudes of his military life,
than he had formerly been wont to show.

For a new element had entered into the current of Zoroaster's thoughts.
For years he had seen the lovely child Nehushta growing up. As a boy of
twenty summers he had rocked her on his knee; later he had taught her
and played with her, and seen the little child turn to the slender girl,
haughty and royal in her young ways, and dominating her playfellows as a
little lioness might rule a herd of tamer creatures; and at last her
sixteenth year had brought with it the bloom of early southern
womanhood, and Zoroaster, laughing with her among the roses in the
gardens, on a summer's day, had felt his heart leap and sink within him,
and his own fair cheek grow hot and cold for the ring of her voice and
the touch of her soft hand.

He who knew so much of mankind, who had lived so long at the court, and
had coldly studied every stage of human nature, where unbridled human
nature ever ruled the hour, knew what he felt; and it was as though he
had received a sharp wound that thrust him through, body and heart and
soul, and cleft his cold pride in two. For days he wandered beneath the
pines and the rhododendron trees alone, lamenting for the fabric of
mighty philosophy he had built himself, in which no woman was ever to
set foot; and which a woman's hand, a woman's eyes had shattered in a
day. It seemed as if his whole life were blasted and destroyed, so that
he was become even as other men, to suffer love and eat his heart out
for a girl's fair word. He would have escaped from meeting the dark
young princess again; but one evening, as he stood alone upon the
terrace of the gardens, sorrowing for the change in himself, she found
him, and there they looked into each other's eyes and saw a new light,
and loved each other fiercely from that day, as only the untainted
children of godlike races could love. But neither of them dared to tell
the prophet, nor to let