handed it to her attendant, asking:

"Whom will you take?"

She answered without hesitation, "Alexas."

"Very well," answered Cleopatra. "Do not allow her a moment for
preparations, whatever they may be. But do not forget--I command
you--that she is a woman."

With these words she turned to follow the chamberlain, but Iras hurried
after her to adjust the diadem upon her head and arrange some of the
folds of her robe.

Cleopatra submitted, saying kindly, "Something else, I see, is weighing
on your heart."

"O my mistress!" cried the girl. "After these tempests of the soul,
these harassing months, you are turning night into day and assuming
fresh labours and anxieties. If the leech Olympus--"

"It must be," interrupted Cleopatra kindly. "The last two weeks seemed
like a single long and gloomy night, during which I sometimes left my
couch for a few hours. One who seeks to drag what is dearest from
the river does not consider whether the cold bath is agreeable. If
we succumb, it does not matter whether we are well or ill; if, on the
contrary, we succeed in gathering another army and saving Egypt, let it
cost health and life. The minutes I intend to grant to the woman will be
thrown into the bargain. Whatever may come, I shall be ready to meet
my fate. I am at one of life's great turning points. At such a time we
fulfil our obligations and demands, both great and small."

A few minutes later Cleopatra entered the throne-room and saluted the
men whom she had roused from their slumber in order to lay before them
a bold plan which, in the lowest depths of misfortune, her yearning to
offer fresh resistance to the victorious foe had caused her vigorous,
restless mind to evoke.

When, many years before, the boy with whom, according to her father's
will, she shared the throne, and his guardian Pothinus, had compelled
her to fly from Alexandria, she had found in the eastern frontier of
the Delta, on the isthmus which united Egypt to Asia, the remains of the
canal which the energetic Pharaohs of former times had constructed to
connect the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.

Even at that period she had deemed this ruinous work worthy of notice,
had questioned the AEnites who dwelt there about the remains, and even
visited some of them herself during the leisure hours of waiting.

From this survey it had seemed possible, by a great expenditure of
labour, to again render navigable the canal which the Pharaohs had used
to rea