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 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.