n than cowardice to the man whose
recklessness had led him to many an unprecedented venture. And now? No, a
thousand times no! Fire and water would unite sooner than Mark Antony and
cowardice! He had been under the coercive power of a demon; a mysterious
spell had forced him--"

"The mightiest power, love," interrupted Iras with enthusiastic
warmth--"a love as great and overmastering as ever subjugated the soul of
man."

"Ay, love," repeated Cleopatra, in a hollow tone. Then her lips curled
with a faint tinge of derision, and her voice expressed the very
bitterness of doubt, as she continued: "Had it been merely the love which
makes two mortals one, transfers the heart of one to the other, it might
perchance have borne my timorous soul into the hero's breast! But no.
Violent tempests had raged before the battle. It had not been possible
always to appear before him in the guise in which we would fain be seen
by those whom we love.

"Even now, when your skilful hands have served me--there is the
mirror--the image it reflects--seems to me like a carefully preserved
wreck--"

"O my royal mistress," cried Iras, raising her hands beseechingly, "must
I again declare that neither the grey hairs which are again brown, nor
the few lines which Olympus will soon render invisible, nor whatever else
perhaps disturbs you in the image you behold reflected, impairs your
beauty? Unclouded and secure of victory, the spell of your godlike
nature--"

"Cease, cease!" interrupted Cleopatra. "I know what I know. No mortal can
escape the great eternal laws of Nature. As surely as birth commences
life, everything that exists moves onward to destruction and decay."

"Yet the gods," Iras persisted, "give to their works different degrees of
existence. The waterlily blooms but a single day, yet how full of vigour
is the sycamore in the garden of the Paneum, which has flourished a
thousand years! Not a petal in the blossoms of your youth has faded, and
is it conceivable that there is even the slightest diminution in the love
of him who cast away all that man holds dearest because he could not
endure to part, even for days or weeks, from the woman whom he
worshipped?"

"Would that he had done so!" cried Cleopatra mournfully. "But are you so
sure that it was love which made him follow me? I am of a different
opinion. True love does not paralyze, but doubles the high qualities of
man. I learned this when Caesar was prisoned by a greatly superio