friendship for love of
country?

Artabanus, the vizier, gave a great feast that night. They drank the
pledge, "Victory to the king, destruction to his enemies." The lords all
looked on Glaucon to see if he would touch the cup. He drank deeply. They
applauded him. He remained long at the wine, the slaves bore him home
drunken. In the morning Mardonius said Xerxes ordered him to serve in the
cavalry guards, a post full of honour and chance for promotion. Glaucon
did not resist. Mardonius sent him a silvered cuirass and a black horse
from the steppes of Bactria,--fleet as the north wind. In his new armour he
went to the chambers of Artazostra and Roxana. They had never seen him in
panoply before. The brilliant mail became him rarely. The ladies were
delighted.

"You grow Persian apace, my Lord Prexaspes,"--Roxana always called him by
his new name now,--"soon we shall hail you as 'your Magnificence' the
satrap of Parthia or Asia or some other kingly province in the East."

"I do well to become Persian," he answered bitterly, unmoved by the
admiration, "for yesterday I heard that which makes it more than ever
manifest that Glaucon the Athenian is dead. And whether he shall ever rise
to live again, Zeus knoweth; but from me it is hid."

Artazostra did not approach, but Roxana came near, as if to draw the
buckle of the golden girdle--the gift of Xerxes. He saw the turquoise
shining on the tiara that bound her jet-black hair, the fine dark profile
of her face, her delicate nostrils, the sweep of drapery that half
revealed the form so full of grace. Was there more than passing friendship
in the tone with which she spoke to him?

"You have heard from Athens?"

"Yes."

"And the tidings were evil."

"Why call them evil, princess? My friends all believe me dead. Can they
mourn for me forever? They can forget me, alas! more easily than I in my
lonesomeness can forget them."

"You are very lonely?"--the hand that drew the buckle worked slowly. How
soft it was, how delicately the Nile sun had tinted it!

"Do you say you have no friends? None? Not in Sardis? Not among the
Persians?"

"I said not that, dear lady,--but when can a man have more than one native
country?--and mine is Attica, and Attica is far away."

"And you can never have another? Can new friendships never take the place
of those that lie forever dead?"

"I do not know."

"Ah, believe, new home, new friends, new love, are more than possible,
will you but