ked for
them in vain? True, they would find little satisfaction--our household
gods I mean--here, where the rigid demands of Hymen are mute before the
ardent pleadings of Eros. Marriage is scarcely reckoned among the sacred
things of life. But this opinion seems to displease you."

"Because it is false," cried Cleopatra, repressing with difficulty a
fresh outburst of indignation. "Yet, if I see aright, your reproach is
aimed only at the bond which united me to the man who was called your
sister's husband. But I will I would gladly remain silent, but you force
me to speak, and I will do so, though your own friend, Proculejus, is
signing to me to be cautious. I--I, Cleopatra, was the wife of Mark
Antony according to the customs of this country, when you wedded him to
the widow of Marcellus, who had scarcely closed his eyes. Not she, but I,
was the deserted wife--I to whom his heart belonged until the hour of his
death, not the unloved consort wedded--" Here her voice fell. She had
yielded to the passionate impulse which urged her to express her feelings
in the matter, and now continued in a tone of gentle explanation: "I know
that you proposed this alliance solely for the peace and welfare of
Rome--"

"To guard both, and to spare the blood of tens of thousands," Octavianus
added with proud decision. "Your clear brain perceived the true state of
affairs. If, spite of the grave importance of these motives, you--But
what voices would not that of the heart silence with you women! The man,
the Roman, succeeded in closing his ears to its siren song. Were it
otherwise, I would never have chosen for my sister a husband by whom I
knew her happiness would be so ill-guarded--I would, as I have already
said, be unable to master my own admiration of the loveliest of women.
But I ought scarcely to boast of that. I fear that a heart like yours
opens less quickly to the modest Octavianus than to a Julius Caesar or
the brilliant Mark Antony. Yet I may be permitted to confess that perhaps
I might have avoided conducting this unhappy war against my friend to the
end under my own guidance, and appearing myself in Egypt, had I not been
urged by the longing to see once more the woman who had dazzled my boyish
eyes. Now, in my mature manhood, I desired to comprehend those marvellous
gifts of mind, that matchless sagacity--"

"Sagacity!" interrupted the Queen, shrugging her shoulders mournfully.
"You possess a far greater share of what is comm