battle--I felt how gladly he would have sent me, who might ruin all, back
to Egypt. Besides, I felt--I have already said so--that something had
come between us. Yet, often as he was on the point of sacrificing me to
the importunate Romans, I need only bid him gaze into the beaker, and
exclaim 'You will not send me hence. We belong together. Whither one
goes, the other will follow!' and he besought me not to leave him. The
very morning before the battle I gave him the drinking cup, urging him,
whatever might happen, never, never to leave me. And he obeyed this time
also, though the person to whom a magic spell bound him was a fleeing
woman. It is terrible. And yet, have I a right to execrate the thrall
of the beaker? Scarcely! For without the Magian's glittering vessel--
a secret voice in my soul has whispered the warning a thousand times
during the sleepless nights--he would have taken another on the galley.
And I believe I know this other--I mean the woman whose singing
enthralled my heart too at the Adonis festival just before our departure.
I noticed the look with which his eyes sought hers. Now I know that it
was not merely my old deceitful foe, jealousy, which warned me against
her. Alexas, the most faithful of his friends, also confirmed what I
merely feared--ah! and he told me other things which the stars had
revealed to him. Besides, he knows the siren, for she was the wife of
his own brother. To protect his honour, he cast off the coquettish
Circe."

"Barine!" fell in resolute tones from the lips of Iras.

"So you know her?" asked Cleopatra, eagerly. The girl raised her clasped
hands beseechingly to the Queen, exclaiming:

"I know this woman only too well, and how my heart rages against her!
O my mistress, that I, too, should aid in darkening this hour! Yet