darkest
hours of her life revived in her memory, and the blackest of them all
had come upon her as the outcome of Aphrodite's gifts. She thought with
a shudder of the murdered Roman, and remembered the moment when Eulaeus
had told her that her Bithynian lover had been killed by wild beasts.
She rushed from one door to another--the victim of the avenging
Eumenides--shrieked from the window for rescue and help, and in that one
hour lived through a whole year of agonies and terrors.

At last--at last, the door of the room was opened, and Euergetes came
towards her, clad in the purple, with the crown of the two countries on
his grand head, radiant with triumph and delight.

"All hail to you, sister!" he exclaimed in a cheerful tone, and lifting
the heavy crown from his curling hair. "You ought to be proud to-day,
for your own brother has risen to high estate, and is now King of Upper
and Lower Egypt."

Cleopatra turned from him, but he followed her and tried to take her
hand. She however snatched it away, exclaiming:

"Fill up the measure of your deeds, and insult the woman whom you have
robbed and made a widow. It was with a prophecy on your lips that you
went forth just now to perpetrate your greatest crime; but it falls on
your own head, for you laugh over our misfortune--and it cannot regard
me, for my blood does not run cold; I am not overwhelmed nor hopeless,
and I shall--"

"You," interrupted Euergetes, at first with a loud voice, which
presently became as gentle as though he were revealing to her the
prospect of a future replete with enjoyment, "You shall retire to your
roof-tent with your children, and there you shall be read to as much as
you like, eat as many dainties as you can, wear as many splendid dresses
as you can desire, receive my visits and gossip with me as often as
my society may seem agreeable to you--as yours is to me now and at all
times. Besides all this you may display your sparkling wit before as
many Greek and Jewish men of letters or learning as you can command,
till each and all are dazzled to blindness. Perhaps even before that you
may win back your freedom, and with it a full treasury, a stable full
of noble horses, and a magnificent residence in the royal palace on
the Bruchion in gay Alexandria. It depends only on how soon our brother
Philometor--who fought like a lion this morning--perceives that he is
more fit to be a commander of horse, a lute-player, an attentive host
of word-spl