Here she uttered a low cry.  The asp had struck its fangs into the upper part of her arm like an icy flash of lightning, and a few instants later Cleopatra sank back upon her pillows lifeless.

Iras, pale but calm, pointed to her, saying “Like a sleeping child.  Bewitching even in death.  Fate itself was constrained to do her will and fulfil the last desire of the great Queen, the victorious woman, whom no heart resisted.  Its decree shatters the presumptuous plan of Octavianus.  The victor will show himself to the Romans without thee, thou dear one.”

Sobbing violently, she bent over the inanimate form, closed the eyes, and kissed the lips and brow.  The weeping Charmian did the same.

Then the footsteps of men were heard in the anteroom, and Iras, who was the first to notice them, cried eagerly: 

“The moment is approaching!  I am glad it is close at hand.  Does it not seem to you also as if the very sun in the heavens was darkened?” Charmian nodded assent, and whispered, “The poison?”

“Here!” replied Iras calmly, holding out a plain pin.  “One little prick, and the deed will be done.  Look!  But no.  You once inflicted the deepest suffering upon me.  You know—­Dion, the playmate of my childhood —­It is forgiven.  But now—­you will do me a kindness.  You will spare my using the pin myself.  Will you not?  I will repay you.  If you wish, my hand shall render you the same service.”

Charmian clasped her niece to her heart, kissed her, pricked her arm lightly, and gave her the other pin, saying: 

“Now it is your turn.  Our hearts were filled with love for one who understood how to bestow it as none other ever did, and our love was returned.  What matters all else that we sacrificed?  Those on whom the sun shines need no other light.  Love is pain,” she said in dying, “but this pain—­especially that of renunciation for love’s sake—­bears with it a joy, an exquisite joy, which renders death easy.  To me it seems as if it were merely following the Queen to—­Oh, that hurt!” Iras’s pin had pricked her.

The poison did its work quickly.  Iras was seized with giddiness, and could scarcely stand.  Charmian had just sunk on her knees, when some one knocked loudly at the closed door, and the voices of Epaphroditus and Proculejus imperiously demanded admittance.

When no answer followed, the lock was hastily burst open.

Charmian was found lying pale and distorted at the feet of her royal mistress; but Iras, tottering and half stupefied by the poison, was adjusting the diadem, which had slipped from its place.  To keep from her beloved Queen everything that could detract from her beauty had been her last care.