How wonderfully she had retained her beauty!  It seemed as if Time had not ventured to touch this masterpiece of feminine loveliness; yet the Greek’s keen eye detected here and there some token of the vanishing spell of youth.  She loved her mistress, yet her inmost soul rejoiced whenever she detected in her the same changes which began to appear in herself, the woman of seven-and-twenty, so many years her sovereign’s junior.  She would gladly have given Cleopatra everything at her command, yet she felt as if she must praise Nature for an act of justice, when she perceived that even her royal favourite was not wholly relieved from the law which applied to all.

“Cease your flattery,” said Cleopatra, smiling mournfully.  “They say that the works of the Pharaohs here on the Nile flout Time.  The inexorable destroyer is less willing to permit this from the Queen of Egypt.  These are grey hairs, and they came from this head, however eagerly you may deny it.  Whose save my own are these lines around the corners of the eyes and on the brow?  What say you to the tooth which my lips do not hide so kindly as you assert?  It was injured the night before the luckless battle.  My dear, faithful, skilful Olympus, the prince of leeches, is the only one who can conceal such things.  But it would not do to take the old man to the war, and Glaucus is far less adroit.  How I missed Olympus during those fatal hours!  I seemed a monster even to myself, and he—­Antony’s eye is only too keen for such matters.  What is the love of men?  A blackened tooth may prove its destruction.  An aspect obnoxious to the gaze will pour water on the fiercest fire.  What hours I experienced, Iras!  Many a glance from him seemed an insult, and, besides, my heart was filled with torturing anxiety.

“Something had evidently come between us!  I felt it.  The trouble began soon after he left Alexandria.  It gnawed my soul like a worm, and now that I am here again I must see clearly.  He will follow me in a few days, I know.  Pinarius Scarpus, with his untouched legions, is in Paraetonium, whither he went.  At Taenarum he resolved to retire from the world which he, on whom it had bestowed so much that is great, hates because he has given it cause for many a shake of the head.  But the old spirit woke again, and if Fortune, usually so faithful, still aids him, a large force will soon join the new African army.  The Asiatic princes—­ But the ruler of the state must be silent.  I entered this room to give the woman her just rights, and the woman shall have them.  He will soon be here.  He cannot live without me.  It is not alone the beaker of Nektanebus which draws him after me!”

“When the greatest of the great, Julius Caesar, sued for your love in Alexandria, and Antony on the Cydnus, you did not possess the goblet,” observed Iras.  “It is two years since Anubis permitted you to borrow the masterpiece from the temple treasures, and within a few days you will be obliged to restore it.  That a mysterious spell emanates from the cup is certain, but one still more powerful dwells in the magic of your own nature.”