usly
submitted to his caresses, till sleep again overpowered him, and his
little hands fell back upon the bed.

She lingered a short time longer, with her brow resting on the ivory of
the couch, praying for this child and his brother and sister. When she
rose again her cheeks were wet with tears, and she pressed her hand upon
her breast. Then, beckoning to Charmian and Archibius, she motioned
towards Alexander and the twins, saying, as she saw tears glittering in
the eyes of both: "I know you have lost this happiness for my sake. For
each one of these children a great empire would not be too high a price;
for them all----What does earth contain that I would not bestow? Yet what
can I still call my own?"

Her smiling face clouded as she asked the question. The vision of the
lost battle again rose before her mind. Her own power was lost,
forfeited, and with it the independence of the native land which she
loved. Rome was already stretching out her hand to add it to the others
as a new province. But this should not be! Her twin children yonder,
sleeping beneath crowns, must wear them! And the boy slumbering on the
pillows? How many kingdoms Antony had bestowed! What remained for her to
give?

Again she bent to the child. A beautiful dream must have hovered over
him, for he was smiling in his sleep. A flood of maternal love welled up
in her agitated heart, and, as she saw the companions of her childhood
also gazing tenderly at the little steeper, she remembered the days of
her own youth, and the quiet happiness which she had enjoyed in her
garden of Epicurus.

Power and splendour had begun for her beyond its confines, but the
greater the heights of worldly grandeur she attained, the more distant,
the more irrecoverable became the consciousness of the happiness which
she had once gratefully enjoyed, and for which she had never ceased to
long. And as she now gazed once more at the peaceful, smiling face,
whence all pain and anxiety seemed worlds away, and all the love which
her heart contained appeared to be pouring towards him, the question
arose in her mind whether this boy, for whom she possessed no crown,
might not be the only happy mortal of them all-happy in the sense of the
master. Deeply moved by this thought, she turned to Archibius and
Charmian, exclaiming in a subdued tone, in order not to rouse the
sleeper: "Whatever destiny may await us, I commend this child to your
special love and care. If Fate denies him