“Are you idiotically in love with this Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, or do you purpose to make use of him and his kith and kin in Rome against me?”

Transported with rage, and without blenching in the least at her brother’s piercing gaze, she hastily retorted:  “Up to this moment only the first perhaps—­for what is my husband to me?  But if you go on as you have begun I shall begin to consider how I may make use of his influence and of his liking for me, on the shores of the Tiber.”

“Liking!” cried Euergetes, and he laughed so loud and violently that Zoe, who was listening at the tent door, gave a little scream, and Cleopatra drew back a step.  “And to think that you—­the most prudent of the prudent—­who can hear the dew fall and the grass grow, and smell here in Memphis the smoke of every fire that is lighted in Alexandria or in Syria or even in Rome—­that you, my mother’s daughter, should be caught over head and ears by a broad-shouldered lout, for all the world like a clumsy town-girl or a wench at a loom.  This ignorant Adonis, who knows so well how to make use of his own strange and resolute personality, and of the power that stands in his background, thinks no more of the hearts he sets in flames than I of the earthen jar out of which water is drawn when I am thirsty.  You think to make use of him by the ’Tiber; but he has anticipated you, and learns from you all that is going on by the Nile and everything they most want to know in the Senate.

“You do not believe me, for no one ever is ready to believe anything that can diminish his self-esteem—­and why should you believe me?  I frankly confess that I do not hesitate to lie when I hope to gain more by untruth than by that much-belauded and divine truth, which, according to your favorite Plato, is allied to all earthly beauty; but it is often just as useless as beauty itself, for the useful and the beautiful exclude each other in a thousand cases, for ten when they coincide.  There, the gong is sounding for the third time.  If you care for plain proof that the Roman, only an hour before he visited you this morning, had our little Hebe carried off from the temple, and conveyed to the house of Apollodorus, the sculptor, at Memphis, you have only to come to see me in my rooms early to-morrow after the first morning sacrifice.  You will at any rate wish to come and congratulate me; bring your children with you, as I propose making them presents.  You might even question the Roman himself at the banquet to-day, but he will hardly appear, for the sweetest gifts of Eros are bestowed at night, and as the temple of Serapis is closed at sunset Publius has never yet seen his Irene in the evening.  May I expect you and the children after morning sacrifice?”