y soul since yesterday.
Barine's flight, the favour and disfavour of Cleopatra, Iras, my
poor head, which abhors politics, while at this time the Queen needs
keen-sighted confidants--"

"By no means," her brother interrupted. "It is for men alone to give
counsel in these matters. Accursed be women's gossip over their
toilet tables. It has already scattered to the four winds many a
well-considered plan of the wisest heads, and an Iras could never be
more fatal to statecraft than just at the present moment, had not Fate
already uttered the final verdict."

"Then hence with these scruples," cried Charmian eagerly; "my doubts
are at an end! As usual, you point out the right path. I had thought of
returning to the country estate we call Irenia--the abode of peace--or
to our beloved little palace at Kanopus, to spend the years which may
still be allotted to me, and return to everything that made my childhood
beautiful. The philosophers, the flowers in the garden, the poets--even
the new Roman ones, of whose works Timagenes sent us such charming
specimens--would enliven the solitude. The child, the daughter of
the man whose love I renounced, and afterwards perhaps her sons and
daughters, would fill the place of my own. As they would have been dear
to Leonax, I, too, would have loved them! This is the guise in which the
future has appeared to me in many a quiet hour. But shall Charmian--who,
when her heart throbbed still more warmly and life lay fair before
her, laid her first love upon the altar of sacrifice for her royal
playfellow--abandon Cleopatra in misfortune from mere selfish scruples?
No, no!--Like you, I too belong--come what may--to the Queen."

She gazed into her brother's face, sure of his approval but, waving his
uplifted hand, he answered gravely: "No, Charmian! What I, a man, can
assume, might be fatal to you, a woman. The present is not sweet enough
for me to embitter it with wormwood from the future. And yet you must
cast one glance into its gloomy domain, in order to understand me. You
can be silent, and what you now learn will be a secret between us. Only
one thing"--here he lowered the loud tones of his deep voice--"only
one thing can save her: the murder of Antony, or an act of shameless
treachery which would deliver him into Octavianus's power. This is the
proposal Timagenes brought."

"This?" she asked in a hollow tone, her grey head drooping.

"This," he repeated firmly. "And if she succumbs to the