“You are free,” replied Berenice, shaking her head. “At any rate, it is too late to restrain you. But, answer me, darling. You have a lover and—you manage to keep him to yourself?”
“I have my way of holding him.”
“Who taught you?”
“I taught myself all alone. Such knowledge comes instinctively or never. When I was but six years old, I knew how I meant to hold my sweetheart later on in life.”
“Will you not tell me?”
“Follow me.”
Berenice rose slowly, put on a tunic and a mantle, shook out her heavy tresses, adhering together by the sweat of the bed, and both the sisters left the room.
Cleopatra crossed a courtyard.
First went the youngest, straight along the vestibule, back to her bed. Under the mattress of fresh, dry byssos, she took a newly-cut key.