He is not surprised—he never was. One might have supposed he received all his visitors in this manner.
“Well?” he says in a quiet way, a half-smile parting his thin lips.
The breast of the woman heaves with tumultuous emotion—just an instant. She speaks, and there is no tremor in her tones. Her voice is low, smooth and scarcely audible: “I am Cleopatra.”
The man at the desk lays down his pen, leans back and gently nods his head, as much as to say, indulgently, “Yes, my child, I hear—go on!”
“I am Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and I would speak with thee, alone.”
She pauses; then raising one jeweled arm motions to Appolidorus that he shall withdraw.
With a similar motion, the man at the desk signifies the same to his astonished secretary.
Appolidorus went down the long hallway, down the stone steps and waited at the outer gate amid the throng of soldiers. They questioned him, gibed him, railed at him, but they got no word in reply.
He waited—he waited an hour, two—and then came a messenger with a note written on a slip of parchment. The words ran thus: “Well-beloved ’Dorus: Veni, vidi, vici! Go fetch my maids; also, all of our personal belongings.”