I ate. “Then I die not,” I said.
“Nay,” she answered, with a toss of her head, “thou wilt live. In truth, I did waste my pity on thee.”
“And thy pity saved my life,” I said wearily, for now I remembered.
“It is nothing,” she answered carelessly. “After all, thou art my cousin; also, I love nursing—it is a woman’s trade. Like enough I had done as much for any slave. Now, too, that the danger is past, I leave thee.”
“Thou hadst done better to let me die, Charmion,” I said after a while, “for life to me can now be only one long shame. Tell me, then, when sails Cleopatra for Cilicia?”
“She sails in twenty days, and with such pomp and glory as Egypt has never seen. Of a truth, I cannot guess where she has found the means to gather in this store of splendour, as a husbandman gathers his golden harvest.”
But I, knowing whence the wealth came, groaned in bitterness of spirit, and made no answer.
“Goest thou also, Charmion?” I asked presently.
“Ay, I and all the Court. Thou, too—thou goest.”
“I go? Nay, why is this?”