he asked. "You, of all
men, must wish me dead."

"I do not wish you dead," he answered coldly. "You have yet much evil to
do in the world, but it will not be all evil. Neither did I need to
intercede for you. Your time is not come, and though the king's hand
were raised to strike you, it would not fall upon you, for you are fated
to accomplish many things."

"Do you not hate me, Zoroaster?"

It was one of the queen's chief characteristics that she never attempted
concealment when it could be of no use, and in such cases affected an
almost brutal frankness. She almost laughed as she asked the
question--it seemed so foolish, and yet she asked it.

"I do not hate you," answered the priest. "You are beneath hatred."

"And I presume you are far above it?" she said very scornfully, and eyed
him in silence for a moment. "You are a poor creature," she pursued,
presently. "I heartily despise you. You suffered yourself to be deceived
by a mere trick; you let the woman you loved go from you without an
effort to keep her. You might have been a queen's lover, and you
despised her. And now, when you could have the woman who did you a
mortal injury be led forth to death before your eyes, you interceded for
her and saved her life. You are a fool. I despise you."

"I rejoice that you do," returned Zoroaster coldly. "I would not have
your admiration, if I might be paid for receiving it with the whole
world and the wisdom thereof."

"Not even if you might have for your wife the woman you loved in your
poor, insipid way--but you loved her nevertheless? She is pale and
sorrowful, poor creature; she haunts the gardens like the shadow of
death; she wearies the king with her wan face. She is eating her heart
out for you--the king took her from you, you could take her from him
to-morrow, if you pleased. The greater your folly, because you do not.
As for her, her foolishness is such that she would follow you to the
ends of the earth--poor girl! she little knows what a pale, wretched,
sapless thing you have in your breast for a heart."

But Zoroaster gazed calmly at the queen in quiet scorn at her scoffing.

"Think you that the sun is obscured, because you can draw yonder curtain
before your window and keep out his rays?" he asked. "Think you that the
children of light feel pain because the children of darkness say in
their ignorance that there is no light?"

"You speak in parables--having nothing plain to say," returned the
queen, th