messengers whom Cleopatra had sent to summon her at this unprecedented
hour. They were her worst enemies: Iras, who desired to wed her lover--
Dion had told her so after the assault--and Alexas, whose suit she had
rejected in a way which a man never forgives.

She had already learned Iras's feelings. The slender figure with the
narrow head, long, delicate nose, small chin, and pointed fingers, seemed
to her like a long, sharp thorn. This strange comparison had entered her
head as Iras stood rigidly erect, reading aloud in a shrill, high voice
the Queen's command. Everything about this hard, cold face appeared as
sharp as a sting, and ready to destroy her.

Her removal from her mother's house to the royal palace had been swift
and simple.

After the attack--of which she saw little, because, overpowered by fear
and horror, she closed her eyes--she had driven home with her lover,
where the leech had bandaged his injuries, and Berenike had quickly and
carefully transformed her own sleeping chamber into a sick-room.

Barine, after changing her dress, did not leave Dion's side. She had
attired herself carefully, for she knew his delight in outward adornment.
When she returned from her grandparents, before sunset, she was alone
with him, and he, kissing her arm, had murmured that wherever the Greek
tongue was spoken there was not one more beautiful. The gem was worthy
of its loveliness. So she had opened her baggage to take out the circlet
which Antony had given, and it again enclasped her arm when she entered
the sick-room.

Because Dion had told her that he deemed her fairest in the simple white