She had, of course, never spoken to Darius of the scene upon the terrace.  She did not desire the destruction of Atossa, nor of her faithless lover.  Amid all the tender kindness the king lavished upon her, the memory of her first love endured still, and she could not have suffered the pain of going over the whole story again.  He was gone, perhaps dead, and she would never see him again.  He would not dare to set foot in the court.  She remembered the king’s furious anger against him, when he suspected that the hooded man in the procession was Zoroaster.  But Darius had afterwards said, in his usual careless way, that he himself would have done as much, and that for his oath’s sake, he would never harm the young Persian.  By the grace of Auramazda he swore, he was the king of kings and did not make war upon disappointed lovers!

Meanwhile, Darius had built himself a magnificent palace, below the fortress of Stakhar, in the valley of the Araxes, and there he spent the winter and the spring, when the manifold cares of the state would permit him.  He had been almost unceasingly at war with the numerous pretenders who set themselves up for petty kings in the provinces.  With unheard-of rapidity, he moved from one quarter of his dominions to another, from east to west, from north to south; but each time that he returned, he found some little disturbance going on at the court, and he bent his brows and declared that a parcel of women were harder to govern than all Media, Persia, and Babylon together.

Atossa wearied him with her suggestions.

“When the king is gone upon an expedition,” she said, “there is no head in the palace.  Otanes is a weak man.  The king will not give me the control of the household, neither will he give it to any one else.”

“There is no one whom I can trust,” answered Darius.  “Can you not dwell together in peace for a month?”

“No,” answered Atossa, with her winning smile, “it is impossible; the king’s wives will never agree among themselves.  Let the king choose some one and make a head over the palace.”

“Whom shall I choose?” asked Darius, moodily.

“The king had a faithful servant once,” suggested Atossa.

“Have I none now?”

“Yea, but none so faithful as this man of whom I speak, nor so ready to do the king’s bidding.  He departed from Shushan when the king took Nehushta to wife—­”

“Mean you Zoroaster?” asked Darius, bending his brows, and eyeing Atossa somewhat fiercely.  But she met his glance with indifference.

“The same,” she answered.  “Why not send for him and make him governor of the palace?  He was indeed a faithful servant—­and a willing one.”

Still the king gazed hard at her face, as though trying to fathom the reason of her request, or at least to detect some scornful look upon her face to agree with her sneering words.  But he was no match for the unparalleled astuteness of Atossa, though he had a vague suspicion that she wished to annoy him by calling up a memory which she knew could not be pleasant, and he retorted in his own fashion.