Fate already uttered
the final verdict."

"Then hence with these scruples," cried Charmian eagerly; "my doubts are
at an end! As usual, you point out the right path. I had thought of
returning to the country estate we call Irenia--the abode of peace--or to
our beloved little palace at Kanopus, to spend the years which may still
be allotted to me, and return to everything that made my childhood
beautiful. The philosophers, the flowers in the garden, the poets--even
the new Roman ones, of whose works Timagenes sent us such charming
specimens--would enliven the solitude. The child, the daughter of the man
whose love I renounced, and afterwards perhaps her sons and daughters,
would fill the place of my own. As they would have been dear to Leonax,
I, too, would have loved them! This is the guise in which the future has
appeared to me in many a quiet hour. But shall Charmian--who, when her
heart throbbed still more warmly and life lay fair before her, laid her
first love upon the altar of sacrifice for her royal playfellow--abandon
Cleopatra in misfortune from mere selfish scruples? No, no!--Like you, I
too belong--come what may--to the Queen."

She gazed into her brother's face, sure of his approval but, waving his
uplifted hand, he answered gravely: "No, Charmian! What I, a man, can
assume, might be fatal to you, a woman. The present is not sweet enough
for me to embitter it with wormwood from the future. And yet you must
cast one glance into its gloomy domain, in order to understand me. You
can be silent, and what you now learn will be a secret between us. Only
one thing"--here he lowered the loud tones of his deep voice--"only one
thing can save her: the murder of Antony, or an act of shameless
treachery which would deliver him into Octavianus's power. This is the
proposal Timagenes brought."

"This?" she asked in a hollow tone, her grey head drooping.

"This," he repeated firmly. "And if she succumbs to the temptation, she
will be faithless to the love which has coursed through her whole life as
the Nile flows through the land of her ancestors. Then, Charmian, stay,
stay under any circumstances, cling to her more firmly than ever, for
then, then, my sister, she will be more wretched--ten, a hundred fold
more wretched than if Octavianus deprives her of everything, perhaps even
life itself."

"Nor will I leave her, come what may. I will remain at her side until the
end," cried Charmian eagerly. But Archibius, without