r,
strove to rejoice that she must die--and could not. There, too, behind
her--watching me now, as ever, with her deep-fringed eyes--was the
lovely Lady Charmion. Who, to look at her innocent face, would believe
that she was the setter of that snare in which the Queen who loved her
should miserably perish? Who would dream that the secret of so much
death was locked in her girlish breast? I gazed, and grew sick at heart
because I must anoint my throne with blood, and by evil sweep away the
evil of the land. At that hour I wished, indeed, that I was nothing
but some humble husbandman, who in its season grows and in its season
garners the golden grain! Alas! the seed that I had been doomed to sow
was the seed of Death, and now I must reap the red fruit of the harvest!

"Why, Harmachis, what ails thee?" said Cleopatra, smiling her slow
smile. "Has the golden skein of stars got tangled, my astronomer? or
dost thou plan some new feat of magic? Say what is it that thou dost so
poorly grace our feast? Nay, now, did I not know, having made inquiry,
that things so low as we poor women are far beneath thy gaze, why, I
should swear that Eros had found thee out, Harmachis!"

"Nay, that I am spared, O Queen," I answered. "The servant of the stars
marks not the smaller light of woman's eyes, and therein is he happy!"

Cleopatra leaned herself towards me, looking on me long and steadily in
such fashion that, despite my will, the blood fluttered at my heart.

"Boast not, thou proud Egyptian," she said in a low voice which none but
I and Charmion could hear, "lest perchance thou dost tempt me to match
my magic against thine. What woman can forgive that a man should push
us by as things of no account? It is an insult to our sex which Nature's
self abhors," and she leaned back again and laughed most musically. But,
glancing up, I saw Charmion, her teeth on her lip and an angry frown
upon her brow.

"Pardon, royal Egypt," I answered coldly, but with such wit as I could
summon, "before the Queen of Heaven even stars grow pale!" This I said
of the moon, which is the sign of the Holy Mother whom Cleopatra dared
to rival, naming herself Isis come to earth.

"Happily said," she answered, clapping her white hands. "Why, here's an
astronomer who has wit and can shape a compliment! Nay, such a wonder
must not pass unnoted, lest the Gods resent it. Charmion, take this
rose-chaplet from my hair and set it upon the learned brow of our
Harmachis.