dealing with the occasion of the moment;
ay, worthy and honourable dealing!"

Then at last I broke forth. "Girl," I cried, "how darest thou speak
thus to me? Mindest thou who and what I am that thou loosest thy peevish
gibes upon me?"

"I mind what it behoves thee to be," she answered quick. "What thou art,
that I mind not now. Surely thou knowest alone--thou and Cleopatra!"

"What meanest thou?" I said. "Am I to blame if the Queen----"

"The Queen! What have we here? Pharaoh owns a Queen!"

"If Cleopatra wills to come hither of a night and talk----"

"Of stars, Harmachis--surely of stars and roses, and naught beside!"

After that I know not what I said; for, troubled as I was, the girl's
bitter tongue and quiet way drove me wellnigh to madness. But this I
know: I spoke so fiercely that she cowered before me as she had cowered
before my uncle Sepa when he rated her because of her Grecian garb. And
as she wept then, so she wept now, only more passionately and with great
sobs.

At length I ceased, half-shamed but still angry and smarting sorely.
For even while she wept she could find a tongue to answer with--and a
woman's shafts are sharp.

"Thou shouldst not speak to me thus!" she sobbed; "it is cruel--it is
unmanly! But I forget thou art but a priest, not a man--except, mayhap,
for Cleopatra!"

"What right hast thou?" I said. "What canst thou mean?"

"What right have I?" she asked, looking up, her dark eyes all aflood
with tears that ran down her sweet face like the dew of morning down
a lily's heart. "What right have I? O Harmachis! art thou blind? Didst
thou not know by what right I speak thus to thee? Then I must tell thee.
Well, it is the fashion in Alexandria! By that first and holy right of
woman--by the right of the great love I bear thee, and which, it seems,
thou hast no eyes to see--by the right of my glory and my shame. Oh,
be not wroth with me, Harmachis, nor set me down as light, because the
truth at last has burst from me; for I am not so. I am what thou wilt
make me. I am the wax within the moulder's hands, and as thou dost
fashion me so I shall be. There breathes within me now a breath of
glory, blowing across the waters of my soul, that can waft me to ends
more noble than ever I have dreamed afore, if thou wilt be my pilot
and my guide. But if I lose thee, then I lose all that holds me from my
worse self--and let shipwreck come! Thou knowest me not, Harmachis! thou
canst not see how big a