would strike him from the ranks of the living, and she——­Again she was overpowered by the terrible, feverish restlessness which had induced her to command the destruction of the goblet, and had brought her to the temple.  She could not return in this mood to meet her councillors, receive visitors, greet her children.  This was the birthday of the twins; Charmian had reminded her of it and undertaken to provide the gifts.  How could she have found time and thought for such affairs?  She had returned from the chief priest late in the evening, yet had asked for a minute description of the condition in which they found Mark Antony.  The report made by Iras harmonized with the state in which she had herself seen him during and after the battle.  Ay, his brooding gloom seemed to have deepened.  Charmian had helped her dress in the morning, and had been on the point of making her difficult confession, and owning that she had aided Barine to escape the punishment of her royal mistress; but ere she could begin, Timagenes was announced, for Cleopatra had not risen from her couch until a late hour.

The object for which the Queen had sought the temple had not been gained; but the consultation with Gorgias had diverted her mind, and the emotions which the thought of her last resting-place had evoked now drowned everything else, as the roar of the surf dominates the twittering of the swallows on the rocky shore.

Ay, she needed calmness!  She must weigh and ponder over many things in absolute quietude, and this she could not obtain at Lochias.  Then her glance rested upon the little sanctuary of Berenike, which she had ordered removed to make room for a garden near at hand, where the children could indulge their love of creative work.  It was empty.  She need fear no interruption there.  The interior contained only a single, quiet, pleasant chamber, with the image of Berenike.  The “Introducer” commanded the guard to admit no other visitors, and soon the little white marble, circular room with its vaulted roof received the Queen.  She sank down on one of the bronze benches opposite to the statue.  All was still; in this cool silence her mind, trained to thought, could find that for which it longed—­clearness of vision, a plain understanding of her own feelings and position in the presence of the impending decision.

At first her thoughts wandered to and fro like a dove ere it chooses the direction of its flight; but after the question why she was having a tomb built so hurriedly, when she would be permitted to live, her mind found the right track.  Among the Scythian guards, the Mauritanians, and Blemmyes in the army there were plenty of savage fellows whom a word from her lips and a handful of gold would have set upon the vanquished Antony, as the huntsman’s “Seize him!” urges the hounds.  A hint, and among the wretched magicians and Magians in the Rhakotis, the Egyptian quarter of the city, twenty men would have assassinated him by poison or wily snares; one command to the Macedonians in the guard of the Mellakes or youths, and he would be a captive that very day, and to-morrow, if she so ordered, on the way to Asia, whither Octavianus, as Timagenes told her, had gone.