“Lost?”

“Forever,” said Archibius, “unless—­

“The Olympians be praised—­that there is still a doubt.”

“Unless Cleopatra can decide to commit an act which will force her to be faithless to herself, and destroy her noble image through all future generations.”

“How?”

“Whenever you learn it, will be too soon.”

“And suppose she should do it, Archibius?  You are her most trusted confidant.  She will place in your charge what she loves more than she does herself.”

“More?  You mean, I suppose, the children?”

“The children!  Yes, a hundred times yes.  She loves them better than aught else on earth.  For them, believe me, she would be ready to go to her death.”

“Let us hope so.”

“And you—­were she to commit the horrible deed—­I can only suspect what it is.  But should she descend from the height which she has hitherto occupied—­would you still be ready—­”

“With me,” he interrupted quietly, “what she does or does not do matters nothing.  She is unhappy and will be plunged deeper and deeper into misery.  I know this, and it constrains me to exert my utmost powers in her service.  I am hers as the hermit consecrated to Serapis belongs to the god.  His every thought must be devoted to him.  To the deity who created him he dedicates body and soul until the death to which he dooms him.  The bonds which unite me to this woman—­you know their origin—­are not less indestructible.  Whatever she desires whose fulfilment will not force me to despise myself is granted in advance.”

“She will never require such things from the friend of her childhood,” cried Charmian.  Then, approaching him with both arms extended joyfully, she exclaimed:  “Thus you ought to speak and feel, and therein is the answer to the question which has agitated my soul since yesterday.  Barine’s flight, the favour and disfavour of Cleopatra, Iras, my poor head, which abhors politics, while at this time the Queen needs keen-sighted confidants—­”

“By no means,” her brother interrupted.  “It is for men alone to give counsel in these matters.  Accursed be women’s gossip over their toilet tables.  It has already scattered to the four winds many a well-considered plan of the wisest heads, and an Iras could never be more fatal to statecraft than just at the present moment, had not Fate already uttered the final verdict.”

“Then hence with these scruples,” cried Charmian eagerly; “my doubts are at an end!  As usual, you point out the right path.  I had thought of returning to the country estate we call Irenia—­the abode of peace—­or to our beloved little palace at Kanopus, to spend the years which may still be allotted to me, and return to everything that made my childhood beautiful.  The philosophers, the flowers in the garden, the poets—­ even the new Roman ones, of whose works Timagenes sent us such charming specimens—­would enliven