speak to you. Give me
at least the consolation of seeing you near, of telling you what I feel.
If not, why have I come to Iberia, joining my fate to yours?"

The chieftain glanced around, as if fearing that someone might be
listening to his conversation with the Amazon.

"Fear not," said Asbyte, divining his thought. "Mago, your brother,
sleeps far from here with Maherbal, the favorite captain. My Numidians
are at the opposite end of the camp. You surround yourself only with
Iberians in order to encourage their fidelity with such a proof of
confidence, and they do not understand Phoenician."

Reassured by Asbyte's answer, Hannibal lowered his head and crossed his
arms, resigned to listen.

"You are as hard and disdainful as a god," sighed the Amazon. "The woman
who loves you feels within her the fire of Moloch, and you will not
deign to quench it even with a glance of kindness, nor with a smile. You
have a heart of bronze; your eyes ever gaze aloft, and you cannot see
those who crawl to approach you. You imagine that you have made me happy
because you lead me from battle to battle, from conquest to conquest,
and you consider that my happiness consists in having my hands, which
used to be adorned with rings, calloused by the lance; my face, which in
other times was covered with costly unguents brought from Egypt by my
caravans, hardened by the cheek-pieces of the helmet. I have become rude
and fierce like a man. Though I possess gardens far away where an
eternal springtime dwells, I have suffered hunger and thirst at your
side. I know not who I am; I doubt my sex, seeing my body made ugly by
fatigue. My skin, over which the hands of my slaves used to slip as if
it were a mirror, is now as hard as that of a crocodile. If I do not
seem as hideous as the troop of wasted females which follows your
soldiers it is because my youth has not forsaken me. And all this for
whom? For you who will not deign to look at me; for you who have
forgotten our first meeting; for you who see in Asbyte only a good
friend, an esteemed ally, who came to you bringing a strong array of
fighters. Hannibal! Lightning-flash of Baal! You are as great as a
demigod, but you do not know human beings. You see in me only an Amazon,
a warrior virgin like those of whom the Grecian poets sing--but I am a
woman!"

Asbyte sadly and silently searched the face of the pensive Hannibal.

"You have forgotten, perhaps, how we met," she added, presently, with
m