f--that Mark Antony's whole acquaintanceship with the
old scholar's granddaughter had been far from leading to any tender
relation. But Cleopatra gave only partial attention. The man whom she
had loved with every pulsation of her heart already seemed to her only
a dear memory. She did not forget the happiness enjoyed with and through
him, or the wrong she had done by the use of the magic goblet; yet with
the wall on the Choma, which divided him from her and the rest of the
world, and her command to have the mausoleum built, she imagined that
the season of love was over. Any new additions to this chapter of
the life of her heart were but the close. Even the jealousy which had
clouded the happiness of her love like a fleeting, rapidly changing
shadow, she believed she had now renounced forever.

While Charmian protested that no one save Dion had ever been heard
with favour by Barine, and related many incidents of her former life,
Cleopatra's thoughts were with Antony. Like the image of the beloved
dead, the towering figure of the Roman hero rose before her mind, but
she recalled him only as he was prior to the battle of Actium. She
desired and expected nothing more from the broken-spirited man, whose
condition was perhaps her own fault. But she had resolved to atone for
her guilt, and would do so at the cost of throne and life. This settled
the account. Whatever her remaining span of existence might add or
subtract, was part of the bargain.

The entrance of Alexas interrupted her. With fiery passion he expressed
his regret that he had been defrauded by base intrigues of the right
bestowed upon him to pass sentence upon a guilty woman. This was the
more difficult to bear because he was deprived of the possibility of
providing for the pursuit of the fugitive. Antony had honoured him
with the commission to win Herod back to his cause. He was to leave
Alexandria that very night. As nothing could be expected in this matter
from the misanthropic Imperator, he hoped that the Queen would avenge
such an offence to her dignity, and adopt severe measures towards the
singer and her last lover, Dion, who with sacrilegious hands had wounded
the son of Caesar.

But Cleopatra, with royal dignity, kept him within the limits of his
position, commanded him not to mention the affair to her again, and
then, with a sorrowful smile, wished him success with Herod, in whose
return to the lost cause of Antony, however, much as she prized the
sk