From pang and strife set free,
I’ll teach thee love and gladness,—
Rest there, for aye, with me!”
The light, the fragrance, the song so pregnant with meaning, all wrought upon Glaucon of Athens. He felt the warm glow in his cheeks; he felt subtle hands outstretching as if drawing forth his spirit. Roxana’s eyes were upon him as she ended. Their gaze met. She was very fair, high-born, sensitive. She was inviting him to put away Glaucon the outcast from Hellas, to become body and soul Prexaspes the Persian, “Benefactor of the King,” and sharer in all the glories of the conquering race. All the past seemed slipping away from him as unreal. Roxana stood before him in her dark Oriental beauty; Hermione was in Athens—and they were giving her in marriage to Democrates. What wonder he felt no mastery of himself, though all that day he had kept from wine?
“A simple song,” spoke Mardonius, who seemed marvellously pleased at all his sister did, “yet not lacking its sweetness. We Aryans are without the elaborate music the Greeks and Babylonians affect.”
“Simplicity is the highest beauty,” answered the Greek, as if still in his trance, “and when I hear Euphrosyne, fairest of the Graces, sing with the voice of Erato, the Song-Queen, [pg 196]I grow afraid. For a mortal may not hear things too divine and live.”
Roxana replaced the harp and made one of her inimitable Oriental courtesies,—a token at once of gratitude and farewell for the evening. Glaucon never took his gaze from her, until with a rustle and sweep of her blue gauze she had glided out of the tent. He did not see the meaning glances exchanged by Mardonius and Artazostra before the latter left them.
When the two men were alone, the bow-bearer asked a question.
“Dear Prexaspes, do you not think I should bless the twelve archangels I possess so beautiful a sister?”
“She is so fair, I wonder that Zeus does not haste from Olympus to enthrone her in place of Hera.”