I missed Olympus
during those fatal hours! I seemed a monster even to myself, and
he--Antony's eye is only too keen for such matters. What is the love of
men? A blackened tooth may prove its destruction. An aspect obnoxious to
the gaze will pour water on the fiercest fire. What hours I experienced,
Iras! Many a glance from him seemed an insult, and, besides, my heart was
filled with torturing anxiety.

"Something had evidently come between us! I felt it. The trouble began
soon after he left Alexandria. It gnawed my soul like a worm, and now
that I am here again I must see clearly. He will follow me in a few days,
I know. Pinarius Scarpus, with his untouched legions, is in Paraetonium,
whither he went. At Taenarum he resolved to retire from the world which
he, on whom it had bestowed so much that is great, hates because he has
given it cause for many a shake of the head. But the old spirit woke
again, and if Fortune, usually so faithful, still aids him, a large force
will soon join the new African army. The Asiatic princes--But the ruler
of the state must be silent. I entered this room to give the woman her
just rights, and the woman shall have them. He will soon be here. He
cannot live without me. It is not alone the beaker of Nektanebus which
draws him after me!"

"When the greatest of the great, Julius Caesar, sued for your love in
Alexandria, and Antony on the Cydnus, you did not possess the goblet,"
observed Iras. "It is two years since Anubis permitted you to borrow the
masterpiece from the temple treasures, and within a few days you will be
obliged to restore it. That a mysterious spell emanates from the cup is
certain, but one still more powerful dwells in the magic of your own
nature."

"Would that it might assert itself to-day!" cried the Queen. "At any rate
the power of the beaker impelled Antony to do many things. I am not vain
enough to believe that it was love, that it was solely the spell of my
own personality which drew him to me in that disastrous hour. That
battle, that incomprehensible, disgraceful battle! You were ill, and
could not see our fleet when it set sail; but even experienced spectators
said that handsomer, larger vessels were never beheld. I was right in
insisting that the decision of the conflict should be left to them. I was
entitled to call them mine. Had we conquered, what a proud delight it
would have been to say, 'The weapons which you gave to the man you loved
gained him the sover