r force
within this very palace, his ships burned, his supply of water cut off.
In him also, in Antony, I was permitted to witness this magnificent
spectacle twenty--what do I say?-a hundred times, so long as he loved me
with all the ardour of his fiery soul. But what happened at Actium? That
shameful flight of the cooing dove after his mate, at which generations
yet unborn will point in mockery! He who does not see more deeply will
attribute to the foolish madness of love this wretched forgetfulness of
duty, honour, fame, the present and the future; but I, Iras--and this is
the thought which whitens one hair after another, which will speedily
destroy the remnant of your mistress's former beauty by the exhaustion of
sleepless nights--I know better. It was not love which drew Antony after
me, not love that trampled in the dust the radiant image of reckless
courage, not love that constrained the demigod to follow the pitiful
track of a fugitive woman."

Here her voice fell, and seizing the girl's wrist with a painful
pressure, she drew her closer to her side and whispered:

"The goblet of Nektanebus is connected with it. Ay, tremble! The powers
that emanate from the glittering wonder are as terrible as they are
unnatural. The magic spell exerted by the beaker has transformed the
heroic son of Herakles, the more than mortal, into the whimpering coward,
the crushed, broken nonentity I found upon the galley's deck. You are
silent? Your nimble tongue finds no reply. How could you have forgotten
that you aided me to win the wager which forced Antony to gaze into the
beaker before I filled it for him? How grateful I was to Anubis when he
finally consented to trust to my care this marvel of the temple
treasures, when the first trial succeeded, and Antony, at my bidding,
placed the magnificent wreath which he wore upon the bald brow of that
crabbed old follower of Aristoteles, Diomedes, whom he detested in his
inmost soul! It was scarcely a year ago, and you know how rarely at first
I used the power of the terrible vessel. The man whom I loved obeyed my
slightest glance, without its aid. But later--before the battle--I felt
how gladly he would have sent me, who might ruin all, back to Egypt.
Besides, I felt--I have already said so--that something had come between
us. Yet, often as he was on the point of sacrificing me to the
importunate Romans, I need only bid him gaze into the beaker, and exclaim
'You will not send me hence. We