epulcher; and, lest
she should be molested there, she sent forth word that she had died.
Her proud spirit could not brook the thought that she might be seized
and carried as a prisoner to Rome. She was too much a queen in soul to
be led in triumph up the Sacred Way to the Capitol with golden chains
clanking on her slender wrists.

Antony, believing the report that she was dead, fell upon his sword;
but in his dying moments he was carried into the presence of the woman
for whom he had given all. With her arms about him, his spirit passed
away; and soon after she, too, met death, whether by a poisoned draught
or by the storied asp no one can say.

Cleopatra had lived the mistress of a splendid kingdom. She had
successively captivated two of the greatest men whom Rome had ever
seen. She died, like a queen, to escape disgrace. Whatever modern
critics may have to say concerning small details, this story still
remains the strangest love story of which the world has any record.

ABELARD AND HELOISE

Many a woman, amid the transports of passionate and languishing love,
has cried out in a sort of ecstasy:

"I love you as no woman ever loved a man before!"

When she says this she believes it. Her whole soul is aflame with the
ardor of emotion. It really seems to her that no one ever could have
loved so much as she.

This cry--spontaneous, untaught, sincere--has become almost one of
those conventionalities of amorous expression which belong to the
vocabulary of self-abandonment. Every woman who utters it, when torn by
the almost terrible extravagance of a great love, believes that no one
before her has ever said it, and that in her own case it is absolutely
true.

Yet, how many women are really faithful to the end? Very many, indeed,
if circumstances admit of easy faithfulness. A high-souled, generous,
ardent nature will endure an infinity of disillusionment, of
misfortune, of neglect, and even of ill treatment. Even so, the flame,
though it may sink low, can be revived again to burn as brightly as
before. But in order that this may be so it is necessary that the
object of such a wonderful devotion be alive, that he be present and
visible; or, if he be absent, that there should still exist some hope
of renewing the exquisite intimacy of the past.

A man who is sincerely loved may be compelled to take long journeys
which will separate him for an indefinite time from the woman who has
given her heart to him, and