empire. But when any of the princes or
generals were summoned to the court by the king and learned to know what
manner of man this Zoroaster was, they began to love him and to honour
him also, as all those did who were near him. And they went away, saying
that never king had so wise and just a counsellor as he was, nor one so
worthy of trust in the smallest as in the greatest things.

But the two queens watched him, and watched his growing power, with
different feelings. Nehushta scarcely ever spoke to him, but gazed at
him from her sad eyes when none saw her; pondering over his prophecy
that foretold the end so near at hand. She had a pride in seeing her old
lover the strongest in the whole land, holding the destinies of the
kingdom as in a balance; and it was a secret consolation to her to know
that he had been faithful to her after all, and that it was for her sake
that he had withdrawn into the desert and given himself to those
meditations from which he had only issued to enjoy the highest power.
And as she looked at him, she saw how he was much changed, and it hardly
seemed as though in his body he were the same man she had so loved. Only
when he spoke, and she heard the even, musical tones of his commanding
voice, she sometimes felt the blood rise to her cheeks with the longing
to hear once more some word of tender love, such as he had been used to
speak to her. But though he often looked at her and greeted her ever
kindly, his quiet, luminous eyes changed not when they gazed on her, nor
was there any warmer touch of colour in the waxen whiteness of his face.
His youth was utterly gone, as the golden light had faded from his hair.
He was not like an old man--he was hardly like a man at all; but rather
like some beautiful, strange angel from another world, who moved among
men and spoke with them, but was not of them. She seemed to look upon a
memory, to love the shadow cast on earth by a being that was gone. But
she loved the memory and the shadow well, and month by month, as she
gazed, she grew more wan and weary.

It would not have been like Darius to take any notice of a trouble that
did not present itself palpably before him and demand his attention.
Nehushta scarcely ever spoke of Zoroaster, and when the king mentioned
him to her, it was always in connection with affairs of state. She
seemed cold and indifferent, and the hot-blooded soldier monarch no
longer looked on Zoroaster as a possible rival. He had whit