due to other causes. Cleopatra
prized him also. Had he been ambitious, he could have stood at the helm
of the ship of state, as Epitrop long ago, but--the whole city knew
it--he had more than once refused to accept a permanent office, because
he believed that he could serve his mistress better as an unassuming,
unnoticed counsellor. Berenike had told Barine that the relations between
Cleopatra and Archibius dated back to their childhood, but she had
learned no particulars. Various rumours were afloat which, in the course
of time, had been richly adorned and interwoven with anecdotes, and
Barine naturally lent the most ready credence to those which asserted
that the princess, in her earliest youth, had cherished a childish love
for the philosopher's son. Now her friend's conduct led her to believe
it.

When Archibius paused, the young beauty assured him that she understood
him; and as the alabaster hanging lamp and a three-branched light cast a
brilliant glow upon the portrait which her father had painted of the
nineteen-year-old Queen, and afterwards copied for his own household, she
pointed to it, and, pursuing the current of her own thoughts, asked the
question:

"Was she not marvellously beautiful at that time?"

"As your father's work represents her," was the reply. "Leonax painted
the portrait of Octavia, on the opposite side, the same year, and perhaps
the artist deemed the Roman the fairer woman." He pointed as he spoke to
a likeness of Octavianus's sister, whom Barine's father had painted as
the young wife of Marcellus, her first husband.

"Oh, no!" said Berenike. "I still remember perfectly how Leonax returned
in those days. What woman might not have been jealous of his enthusiasm
for the Roman Hera? At that time I had not seen the portrait, and when I
asked whether he thought Octavia more beautiful than the Queen, for whom
Eros had inflamed his heart, as in the case of most of the beautiful
women he painted, he exclaimed--you know his impetuous manner--'Octavia
stands foremost in the ranks of those who are called "beautiful" or "less
beautiful"; the other, Cleopatra, stands alone, and can be compared with
no one.'"

Archibius bent his head in assent, then said firmly, "But, as a child,
when I first saw her, she would have been the fairest even in the dance
of the young gods of love."

"How old was she then?" asked Barine, eagerly.

"Eight years," he answered. "How far in the past it is, yet I have not