pointed to the Queen. A change had come upon her: her hands
were clenched, and about her face, all rosy with the hue of sleep,
gathered a cloud of fear. Her breath came quick, she raised her arms as
though to ward away a blow, then with a stifled moan sat up and opened
the windows of her eyes. They were dark, dark as night; but when
the light found them they grew blue as the sky grows blue before the
blushing of the dawn.

"Caesarion?" she said; "where is my son Caesarion?--Was it then a dream?
I dreamed that Julius--Julius who is dead--came to me, a bloody toga
wrapped about his face, and having thrown his arms about his child led
him away. Then I dreamed I died--died in blood and agony; and one I
might not see mocked me as I died. _Ah!_ who is that man?"

"Peace, Madam! peace!" said Charmion. "It is but the magician Harmachis,
whom thou didst bid me bring to thee at this hour."

"Ah! the magician--that Harmachis who overthrew the giant? I remember
now. He is welcome. Tell me, Sir Magician, can thy magic mirror call
forth an answer to this dream? Nay, how strange a thing is Sleep, that
wrapping the mind in a web of darkness, straightly compels it to its
will! Whence, then, come those images of fear rising on the horizon
of the soul like some untimely moon upon a midday sky? Who grants them
power to stalk so lifelike from Memory's halls, and, pointing to
their wounds, thus confront the Present with the Past? Are they, then,
messengers? Does the half-death of sleep give them foothold in our
brains, and thus upknit the cut thread of human kinship? That was
Caesar's self, I tell thee, who but now stood at my side and murmured
through his muffled robe warning words of which the memory is lost to
me. Read me this riddle, thou Egyptian Sphinx,[*] and I'll show thee a
rosier path to fortune than all thy stars can point. Thou hast brought
the omen, solve thou its problem."

[*] Alluding to his name. Harmachis was the Grecian title of
the divinity of the Sphinx, as Horemkhu was the Egyptian.--
Editor.

"I come in a good hour, most mighty Queen," I answered, "for I have some
skill in the mysteries of Sleep, that is, as thou hast rightly guessed,
a stair by which those who are gathered to Osiris may from time to time
enter at the gateways of our living sense, and, by signs and words that
can be read of instructed mortals, repeat the echoes of that Hall of
Truth which is their habitation. Yes, Sleep is a stair