to their customs, is the rightful husband of the Queen. I
know, too, that you are both against me. Yet Cleopatra is in reality a
Greek, and therefore--eternal gods!--I can sincerely pity her; but the
marriage has been solemnized, and I cannot blame Octavia. She rears and
cherishes, as if they were her own, the children of her faithless husband
and Fulvia, his first wife, who have no claim upon her. It is more than
human to take the stones from the path of the man who became her foe, as
she does. No woman In Alexandria can pray more fervently than I that
Cleopatra and her friend may conquer Octavianus. His cold nature, highly
as my brother esteems him, is repellent to me. But when I gaze at
Octavia's beautiful, chaste, queenly, noble countenance, the mirror of
true womanly purity--"

"You can rejoice," Archibius added, completing the sentence, and laying
his right hand soothingly on the arm of the excited woman, "only it would
be advisable at this time to put the portrait elsewhere, and rest
satisfied with confiding your opinion of Octavia to your brother and a
friend as reliable as myself. If we conquer, such things may pass; if
not--The messenger tarries long--"

Here Barine again entreated him to use the time. She had only once had
the happiness of being noticed by the Queen--just after her song at the
Adonis festival. Then Cleopatra had advanced to thank her. She said only
a few kind words, but in a voice which seemed to penetrate the inmost
depths of her heart and bind her with invisible threads. Meanwhile
Barine's eyes met those of her sovereign, and at first they roused an
ardent desire to press her lips even on the hem of her robe, but
afterwards she felt as if a venomous serpent had crawled out of the most
beautiful flower.

Here Archibius interrupted her with the remark that he remembered
perfectly how, after the song, Antony had addressed her at the same time
as the Queen, and Cleopatra lacked no feminine weakness.

"Jealousy?" asked Barine, in astonishment. "I was not presumptuous enough
to admit it. I secretly feared that Alexas, the brother of Philostratus,
had prejudiced her. He is as ill-disposed towards me as the man who was
my husband. But everything connected with those two is so base and
shameful that I will not allow it to cloud this pleasant hour. Yet the
fear that Alexas might have slandered me to the Queen is not groundless.

"He is as shrewd as his brother, and through Antony, into whose fav