Iras threw back her head with angry pride, exclaiming passionately:  “Was it I who injured you?  I do not know in what respect.  But you and Charmian—­though you have so long been aware that this heart was closed against every love save one—­stepped between me and the man for whom I have yearned since childhood, and built the bridge which united Dion and Barine.  I held the woman I hated in my grasp, and thanked the immortals for the boon; but you two—­it is not difficult to guess the secret you are still trying to keep from me—­you aided her to escape.  You have robbed me of my revenge; you have again placed the singer in the path where she must find the man to whom I have a better and older claim, and who perhaps may still be considering which of us two will be the better mistress of his house, if Alexas and his worthy brother do not arrange matters so that we must both content ourselves with thinking tenderly of a dead man.  That is why I believe that I am no longer indebted to you, that Charmian has more than repaid herself for all the kindness she has ever showed me.”

With these words she hurried to the door, but paused on the threshold, exclaiming:  “This is the state of affairs; yet I am ready to serve the Queen hand in hand with you as before; for you two—­as I have said—­are necessary to her.  In other respects—­I shall follow my own path.”

CHAPTER XVII.

Cleopatra had sought the venerable Anubis, who now, as the priest of Alexander, at the age of eighty, ruled the whole hierarchy of the country.  It was difficult for him to leave his arm-chair, but he had been carried to the observatory to examine the adverse result of the observation made by the Queen herself.  The position of the stars, however, had been so unfavourable that the more deeply Cleopatra entered into these matters, the less easy he found it to urge the mitigating influences of distant planets, which he had at first pointed out.

In his reception-hall, however, the chief priest had assured her that the independence of Egypt and the safety of her own person lay in her hands; only—­the planets showed this—­a terrible sacrifice was required—­a sacrifice of which his dignity, his eighty years, and his love for her alike forbade him to speak.  Cleopatra was accustomed to hear these mysterious sayings from his lips, and interpreted them in her own way.  Many motives had induced her to seek the venerable prelate at this late hour.  In difficult situations he had often aided her with good counsel; but this time she was not led to him by the magic cup of Nektanebus, which the eight pastophori who accompanied it had that day restored to the temple, for since the battle of Actium the superb vessel had been a source of constant anxiety to her.

Cleopatra had now asked the teacher of her childhood the direct question whether the cup—­a wide, shallow vessel, with a flat, polished bottom could really have induced Antony to leave the battle and follow her ere the victory was decided.  She had used it just before the conflict between the galleys, and this circumstance led Anubis to answer positively in the affirmative.