r from here to the desert
and the lions are scarce. Besides, the men who are fit for lion-hunting
are generally engaged in hunting their fellow-creatures."

"Does the Great King hunt?" inquired Nehushta, languidly sipping her
sherbet from a green jade goblet, as she lay among her cushions,
supporting herself upon one elbow.

"Whenever he has leisure. He will talk of nothing else to you--"

"Surely," interrupted Nehushta, with an air of perfect innocence, "I
shall not be so far honoured as that the Great King should talk with
me?"

Atossa raised her blue eyes and looked curiously at the dark princess.
She knew nothing of what had passed the night before, save that the king
had seen Nehushta for a few moments, but she knew his character well
enough to imagine that his frank and, as she thought, undignified manner
might have struck Nehushta even in that brief interview. The idea that
the princess was already deceiving her flashed across her mind. She
smiled more tenderly than ever, with a little added air of sadness that
gave her a wonderful charm.

"Yes, the Great King is very gracious to the ladies of the court," she
said. "You are so beautiful and so different from them all that he will
certainly talk long with you after the banquet this evening--when he has
drunk much wine." The last words were added with a most special
sweetness of tone.

Nehushta's face flushed a little as she drank more sherbet before she
answered. Then, letting her soft dark eyes rest, as though in
admiration, upon the queen's face, she spoke in a tone of gentle
deprecation:

_"Shall a man prefer the darkness of night to the
glories of risen day?
Or shall a man turn from the lilies to pluck the
lowly flower of the field?"_

"You know our poets, too?" exclaimed Atossa, pleased with the graceful
tone of the compliment, but still looking at Nehushta with curious eyes.
There was a self-possession about the Hebrew princess that she did not
like; it was as though some one had suddenly taken a quality of her own
and made it theirs and displayed it before her eyes. There was indeed
this difference, that while Atossa's calm and undisturbed manner was
generally real, Nehushta's was assumed, and she herself felt that, at
any moment, it might desert her at her utmost need.

"So you know our poets?" repeated the queen, and this time she laughed
lightly. "Indeed I fear the king will talk to you more than ever, for he
loves poetry