Cleopatra’s head drooped in shame as she answered distinctly, yet in a tone of modest denial:
“I only asked the favour of an audience. I did not summon. I thank you for granting the request. If it is dangerous for man to bow to woman’s charms, no peril threatens you here. Beauty cannot withstand tortures such as those which have been imposed on me—barely can life remain. But you prevented my casting it from me. If you are just, you will grant to the woman whom you would not permit to die an existence whose burden will not exceed her power to endure.”
The Cæsar again bowed silently and answered courteously:
“I intend to make it worthy of you.”
“Then,” cried Cleopatra impetuously, “release me from this torturing uncertainty. You are not one of the men who never look beyond to-day and to-morrow.”
“You are thinking,” said Octavianus harshly, “of one who perhaps would still be among us, if with wiser caution——”
Cleopatra’s eyes, which hitherto had met the victor’s cold gaze with modest entreaty, flashed angrily, and a majestic: “Let the past rest!” interrupted him.
But she soon mastered the indignation which had stirred her passionate blood, and in a totally different tone, not wholly free from gentle persuasion, she continued:
“The provident intellect of the man whose nod the universe obeys grasps the future as well as the present. Must not he, therefore, have decided the children’s fate ere he consented to see their mother? The only obstacle in your path, the son of your great uncle——”
“His doom was a necessity,” interrupted the conqueror in a tone of sincere regret. “As I mourned Antony, I grieve for the unfortunate boy.”