The new scene which would result from this change had been conjured before the Queen’s mental vision with marvellous celerity, and she described it in brief, vivid language to the architect.  The garden should remain, but must be enlarged from the Lochias to the bridge.  Thence a covered colonnade would lead to the palace.  After Gorgias had assured her that all this could easily be arranged, she gazed thoughtfully at the ground for a time, and then gave orders that the work should be commenced at once, and requested him to spare neither means nor men.

Gorgias foresaw a period of feverish toil, but it did not daunt him.  With such a master builder he was ready to roof the whole city.  Besides, the commission delighted him because it proved that the woman whose mausoleum was to rise from the earth so swiftly still thought of enhancing the pleasures of existence; for, though she wished the garden to remain unchanged, she desired to see the colonnade and the remainder of the work constructed of costly materials and in beautiful forms.  When she bade him farewell, Gorgias kissed her robe with ardent enthusiasm.

What a woman!  True, she had not even raised her veil, and was attired in plain dark clothing, but every gesture revealed the most perfect grace.

The arm and hand with which she pointed now here, now there, again seemed to him fairly instinct with life; and he, who deemed perfection of form of so much value, found it difficult to avert his eyes from her marvellous symmetry.  And her whole figure!  What lines, what genuine aristocratic elegance, and warm, throbbing life!

That morning when Helena, now an inmate of his own home, greeted him, he had essayed to compare her, mentally, with Cleopatra, but speedily desisted.  The man to whom Hebe proffers nectar does not ask for even the best wine of Byblus.  A feeling of grateful, cheerful satisfaction, difficult to describe, stole over him when the reserved, quiet Helena addressed him so warmly and cordially; but the image of Cleopatra constantly thrust itself between them, and it was difficult for him to understand himself.  He had loved many women in succession, and now his heart throbbed for two at once, and the Queen was the brighter of the two stars whose light entranced him.  Therefore his honest soul would have considered it a crime to woo Helena now.

Cleopatra knew what an ardent admirer she had won in the able architect, and the knowledge pleased her.  She had used no goblet to gain him.  Doubtless he would begin to build the mausoleum the next morning.  The vault must have space for several coffins.  Antony had more than once expressed the desire to be buried beside her, wherever he might die, and this had occurred ere she possessed the beaker.  She must in any case grant him the same favour, no matter in what place or by whose hand he met death, and the bedimmed light of his existence was but too evidently nearing extinction.  If she spared him, Octavianus