“The Curse of Antony.”
“Meaning Cleopatra?”
“Meaning thee, O Queen!”
She laughed. She did not strike his mouth, as was her first mad impulse.
“Darest thou?” she breathed again; then stared into his eyes in pure amazement. Was he not the first man who had ever spoken to her thus?
“Well, thou lovest him,” she said presently, with a deep sigh—“and I, too, in my poor way. It shall be a contest of loves between us.”
She gazed a moment unmoved on the little distorted body at her feet, glanced mockingly at the Decurion, and, turning, left him lost in wonderment.
He never saw her again until near the end. She was occupied in the meanwhile in building herself an unsurpassable mausoleum, and in testing on the bodies of slaves the effects of various poisons. Foreseeing the worst, and prepared for it, she would yet woo Death like a voluptuary, and borrow rapture of his embrace. Yet so far the test had failed her; and not from any inhumanity; for indeed she would have kissed in ecstasy that slave who suffered nothing in obliging her. But one and all they would persist most perversely in dying in extreme agony.
And then one day she sent for the Decurion Dentatus, who, in the thick of the general treachery, was among the few noble who stood by their leader. It was when Octavius was at Pelusium, and the fate of Alexandria appeared sealed.
The soldier was brought in to the Queen where she lay in a private chamber of her Palace. Two faithful women attended upon their mistress; an enamelled casket lying on a table near by was half buried under scented blossoms. Cleopatra fanned herself languidly; a luminous green scarab burned on her forehead between the wings of golden hair; the gauzy film which enwrapped her deepened to a tender flush over hips and bosom. Yet in her eyes some shadow of a mortal fear belied the sensuous abandonment of her attitude.