le as heaven, and her name is the
Unforeseen. Man, strive not to escape from Woman and the love of
woman; for, fly where thou wilt, She is yet thy fate, and whate'er thou
buildest thou buildest it for her!

And thus it came to pass that I, Harmachis, who had put such matters far
from me, was yet doomed to fall by the thing I held of no account. For,
see, this Charmion: she loved me--why, I know not. Of her own thought
she learned to love me, and of her love came what shall be told. But I,
knowing naught, treated her like a sister, walking as it were hand in
hand with her towards our common end.

And so the time passed on, till, at length, all things were made ready.

It was the night before the night when the blow should fall, and there
were revellings in the palace. That very day I had seen Sepa, and with
him the captains of a band of five hundred men, who should burst into
the palace at midnight on the morrow, when I had slain Cleopatra the
Queen, and put the Roman and the Gallic legionaries to the sword. That
very day I had suborned the Captain Paulus who, since I drew him through
the gates, was my will's slave. Half by fear and half by promises of
great reward I had prevailed upon him, for the watch was his, to unbar
that small gate which faces to the East at the signal on the morrow
night.

All was made ready--the flower of Freedom that had been five-and-twenty
years in growth was on the point of bloom. Armed companies were
gathering in every city from Abu to Athu, and spies looked out from
their walls, awaiting the coming of the messenger who should bring
tidings that Cleopatra was no more and that Harmachis, the royal
Egyptian, had seized the throne.

All was prepared, triumph hung in my hand as a ripe fruit to the hand of
the plucker. Yet as I sat at the royal feast my heart was heavy, and a
shadow of coming woe lay cold within my mind. I sat there in a place
of honour, near the majesty of Cleopatra, and looked down the lines of
guests, bright with gems and garlanded with flowers, marking those whom
I had doomed to die. There before me lay Cleopatra in all her beauty,
which thrilled the beholder as he is thrilled by the rushing of the
midnight gale, or by the sight of stormy waters. I gazed on her as she
touched her lips with wine and toyed with the chaplet of roses on her
brow, thinking of the dagger beneath my robe that I had sworn to bury in
her breast. Again, and yet again, I gazed and strove to hate he