Farewell."

He turned his gaze from her and passed slowly on, looking down to the
ground, his hands folded before him. He left her standing in the way,
greatly troubled and not understanding his saying.

Had she not seen with her eyes how he held Atossa in his arms on that
evil morning in Shushan? Had she not seen how, when he was sent away, he
had written a letter to Atossa and no word to herself? Could these
things which she had seen and known, be untrue? The thought was
horrible--that her whole life had perhaps been wrecked and ruined by a
mistake. And yet there was not any mistake, she repeated to herself. She
had seen; one must believe what one sees. She had heard Atossa's
passionate words of love, and had seen Zoroaster's arms go round her
drooping body; one must believe what one sees and hears and knows!

But there was a ringing truth in his voice just now when he said: "I lie
not, nor have lied to thee ever." A lie--no, not spoken, but done; and
the lie of an action is greater than the lie of a word. And yet, his
voice sounded true just now in the dusk, and there was something in it,
something like the ring of a far regret. "Ask her whom thou hatest," he
had said. That was Atossa. There was no other woman whom she hated--no
man save him.

She had many times asked herself whether or no she loved the king. She
felt something for him that she had not felt for Zoroaster. The
passionate enthusiasm of the strong, dark warrior sometimes carried her
away and raised her with it; she loved his manliness, his honesty, his
unchanging constancy of purpose. And yet Zoroaster had had all these,
and more also, though they had shown themselves in a different way. She
looked back and remembered how calm he had always been, how utterly
superior in his wisdom. He seemed scarcely mortal, until he had one day
fallen--and fallen so desperately low in her view, that she loathed the
memory of that feigned calmness and wisdom and parity. For it must have
been feigned. How else could he have put his arms about Atossa, and
taken her head upon his breast, while she sobbed out words of love?

But if he loved Atossa, she loved him as well. She said so, cried it
aloud upon the terrace where any one might have heard it. Why then had
he left the court, and hidden himself so long in the wilderness? Why,
before going out on his wanderings, had he disguised himself, and gone
and stood where the procession passed, and hissed out a bitter insul