“Yet I may, but I will not! To live the prey of so many memories, the fount of an undying shame that night by night, as I lie sleepless, shall well afresh from my sorrow-stricken heart!-to live torn by a love I cannot lose!-to stand alone like some storm-twisted tree, and, sighing day by day to the winds of heaven, gaze upon the desert of my life, while I wait the lingering lightning’s stroke-nay, that will not I, Harmachis! I had died long since, but I lived on to serve thee now no more thou needest me, and I go. “Bethink thee, Charmion,” I said “yet mayst thou live for many years, hiding these sorrows beneath the withered days.” So of her cup and the cup of Iras I will surely drink!” And she took the phial, and with a steady hand poured what was left of the poison into the goblet. Oh! what a bitter fate is mine, to have brought misery on all I love, and, in the end, to die unloved! To thee I have atoned to my angered Gods I have atoned and now I go to find a way whereby I may atone to Cleopatra in that Hell where she is, and which I must share! For she loved me well, Harmachis and, now that she is dead, methinks that, after thee, I loved her best of all. “So be it, Harmachis! And I, Harmachis-I fly also, but with swifter wings. I fly-I fly to a heavier death! Not thus easily may I end my space of earthly penance.” “It is done!” quoth Charmion “we are avenged, and now, Harmachis, dost follow by this same road?” And she nodded towards the phial on the board. We drew back and looked on her, and on dead Iras at her feet. And there at length Cleopatra lay, more splendid now in her cold majesty of death than in her richest hour of breathing beauty!

She folded the chill hands upon the breast whence Passion’s breath had fled, and straightened the bent knees beneath the broidered robe, and by the head set flowers. Charmion placed the uræus crown upon the ivory brow, and combed the night-dark hair that showed never a thread of silver, and, for the last time, shut those eyes wherein had shone all the changing glories of the sea.

Together, then, we lifted up the body and laid it on the golden bed. I spoke no word in answer, for my heart was very heavy, and now that all was done I was weary.

“Come, aid me, Prince let us stretch this poor clay upon the bed and deck it royally, so that it may give its dumb audience to the messengers of Cæsar as becomes the last of Egypt’s Queens.” “Thy vengeance, thou dark Harmachis,” she said, in a hoarse voice, “is a thing hideous to behold! O lost Egypt, with all thy sins thou wast indeed a Queen! CHARMION unclasped my arm, to which she had clung in terror.

Harmachis cleopatra