“Do you know its real history?” asked Cleopatra, clasping her fingers more closely around the pencil in her hand.

“If I did,” replied Alexas, smiling significantly, “the receiver of stolen goods should not betray the thief.”

“Not even if the person who has been robbed—­the Queen—­commands you to give up the dishonestly acquired possession?”

“Unfortunately, even then I should be forced to withhold obedience; for consider, my royal mistress, there are but two great luminaries around which my dark life revolves.  Shall I betray the moon, when I am sure of gaining nothing thereby save to dim the warm light of the sun?”

“That means that your revelations would wound me, the sun?”

“Unless your lofty soul is too great to be reached by shadows which surround less noble women with an atmosphere of indescribable torture.”

“Do you intend to render your words more attractive by the veil with which you shroud them?  It is transparent, and dims the vision very little.  My soul, you think, should be free from jealousy and the other weaknesses of my sex.  There you are mistaken.  I am a woman, and wish to remain one.  As Terence’s Chremes says he is a human being, and nothing human is unknown to him, I do not hesitate to confess all feminine frailties.  Anubis told me of a queen in ancient times who would not permit the inscriptions to record ‘she,’ but ‘he came,’ or ’he, the ruler, conquered.’  Fool!  Whatever concerns me, my womanhood is not less lofty than the crown.  I was a woman ere I became Queen.  The people prostrate themselves before my empty litters; but when, in my youth, I wandered in disguise with Antony through the city streets and visited some scene of merrymaking, while the men gazed admiringly at me, and we heard voices behind us murmur, ‘A handsome couple!’ I returned home full of joy and pride.  But there was something greater still for the woman to learn, when the heart in the breast of the Queen forgot throne and sceptre and, in the hours consecrated to Eros, tasted joys known to womanhood alone.  How can you men, who only command and desire, understand the happiness of sacrifice?  I am a woman; my birth does not exalt me above any feeling of my sex; and what I now ask is not as Queen but as woman.”

“If that is the case,” Alexas answered with his hand upon his heart, “you impose silence upon me; for were I to confess to the woman Cleopatra what agitates my soul, I should be guilty of a double crime—­I would violate a promise and betray the friend who confided his noble wife to my protection.”

“Now the darkness is becoming too dense for me,” replied Cleopatra, raising her head with repellent pride.  “Or, if I choose to raise the veil, I must point out to you the barriers—­