ews could scarcely be expected, for a
chain stretching from the end of the Pharos to a cliff directly opposite
in the Alveus Steganus, closed the narrow opening. But it could be
raised if a state galley arrived with an important message, and this was
expected by the throng on the shore.

Doubtless many came from banquets, cookshops, taverns, or the nocturnal
meeting-places of the sects that practised the magic arts, yet the
weight of anxious expectation seemed to check the joyous activity, and
wherever Archibius glanced he beheld eager, troubled faces. The wind
forced many to bow their heads, and, wherever they turned their eyes,
flags and clouds of dust were fluttering in the air, increasing the
confusion.

As the galley put off from the shore, and the flutes summoned the
oarsmen to their toil, its owner felt so disheartened that he did not
even venture to hope that he was going in quest of good tidings.

Long-vanished days had, as it were, been called from the grave, and many
a scene from the past rose before him as he lay among the cushions on
the poop, gazing at the sky, across which dark, swiftly sailing clouds
sometimes veiled the stars and again revealed them.

"How much we can conceal by words without being guilty of falsehood!" he
murmured, while recalling what he had told the women.

Ay, he had been Cleopatra's confidant in his early youth, but how he
had loved her, how, even as a boy, he had been subject to her, body and
soul! He had allowed her to see it, displayed, confessed it; and she had
accepted it as her rightful due. She had repelled with angry pride his
only attempt to clasp her, in his overflowing affection, in his arms;
but to show his love for her is a crime for which the loftiest woman
pardons the humblest suitor, and a few hours later Cleopatra had met him
with the old affectionate familiarity.

Again he recalled the torments which he had endured when compelled to
witness how completely she yielded to the passion which drew her to
Antony. At that time the Roman had merely swept through her life like a
swiftly passing meteor, but many things betrayed that she did not forget
him; and while Archibius had seen without pain her love for the great
Caesar bud and grow, the torturing feeling of jealousy again stirred in
his heart, though youth was past, when at Tarsus, on the river Cydnus,
she renewed the bond which still united her to Antony.

Now his hair had grown grey, and though nothing had