She shuddered at the thought, remembering the hours when her childish heart had shed tears of blood over the infamous mother whom her father had execrated.  And Queen Tryphoena, whom history recorded as a monster, had not killed her husband, but merely thrust him from the throne.

Arsinoe’s execrations of her mother and sister came back to her memory, and the thought that the rosy lips of the twins and her darling Alexander could ever open to curse her,—­the idea that the children would ever raise their beloved hands to point at her, the wicked murderess of their father, with horror and scorn—­No, no, and again no!  She would not purchase a few more years of valueless life at the cost of this humiliation and shame.

Purchase of whom?

Of that Octavianus who had robbed her son of the heritage of his father, Caesar, and whose mention in the will was like an imputation on her fidelity—­the cold-hearted, calculating upstart, whose nature from their first meeting in Rome had repelled, rebuffed, chilled her; of the man by whose cajolery and power her husband—­for in her own eyes and those of the Egyptians Antony held this position—­had been induced to wed his sister, Octavia, and thereby stamp her, Cleopatra, as merely his love, cast a doubt upon the legitimate birth of her children; of the false friend of the trusting Antony who, before the battle of Actium, had most deeply humiliated and insulted both!

On the contrary, her royal pride rebelled against obeying the command of such a man to commit the most atrocious deed; and from childhood this pride had been as much a part of her nature as her breath and the pulsation of her heart.  And yet, for her children’s sake, she might perhaps have incurred this disgrace, had it not been at the same time the grave of the best and noblest things which she desired to implant in the young souls of the twins and Alexander.

While thinking of the children’s curses she had risen from her seat.  Why should she reflect and consider longer?  She had found the clear perception she sought.  Let Gorgias hasten the building of the tomb.  Should Fate demand her life, she would not resist if she were permitted to preserve it only at the cost of murder or base treachery.  Her lover’s was already forfeited.  At his side she had enjoyed a radiant, glowing, peerless bliss, of which the world still talked with envious amazement.  At his side, when all was over, she would rest in the grave, and compel the world to remember with respectful sympathy the royal lovers, Antony and Cleopatra.  Her children should be able to think of her with untroubled hearts, and not even the shadow of a bitter feeling, a warning thought, should deter them from adorning their parents’ grave with flowers, weeping at its foot, invoking and offering sacrifices to their spirits.

Then she glanced at the statue of Berenike, who had also once worn on her brow the double crown of Egypt.  She, too, had early died a violent death; she, too, had known how to love.  The vow to sacrifice her beautiful hair to Aphrodite if her husband returned uninjured from the Syrian war had rendered her name illustrious.  “Berenike’s Hair” was still to be seen as a constellation in the night heavens.