“What’s this?” she cried; “I grow cold, but I die not!  Thou dark physician, thou hast betrayed me!”

“Peace, Cleopatra!  Presently shalt thou die and know the fury of the Gods! The curse of Menkau-ra hath fallen! It is finished!  Look upon me, woman!  Look upon this marred face, this twisted form, this living mass of sorrow! Look! look! Who am I?”

She stared upon me wildly.

“Oh! oh!” she shrieked, throwing up her arms; “at last I know thee!  By the Gods, thou art Harmachis!—­Harmachis risen from the dead!”

“Ay, Harmachis risen from the dead to drag thee down to death and agony eternal!  See, thou Cleopatra; I have ruined thee as thou didst ruin me!  I, working in the dark, and helped of the angry Gods, have been thy secret spring of woe!  I filled thy heart with fear at Actium; I held the Egyptians from thy aid; I sapped the strength of Antony; I showed the portent of the Gods unto thy captains!  By my hand at length thou diest, for I am the instrument of Vengeance!  Ruin I pay thee back for ruin, Treachery for treachery, Death for death!  Come hither, Charmion, partner of my plots, who betrayed me, but, repenting, art the sharer of my triumph, come watch this fallen wanton die!”

Cleopatra heard, and sank back upon the golden bed, groaning “And thou, too, Charmion!”

A moment so she sat, then her Imperial spirit burnt up glorious before she died.

She staggered from the bed, and, with arms outstretched, she cursed me.

“Oh! for one hour of life!” she cried—­“one short hour, that therein I might make thee die in such fashion as thou canst not dream, thou and that false paramour of thine, who betrayed both me and thee!  And thou didst love me!  Ah, there I have thee still!  See, thou subtle, plotting priest”—­and with both hands she rent back the royal robes from her bosom—­“see, on this fair breast once night by night thy head was pillowed, and thou didst sleep wrapped in these same arms.  Now, put away their memory if thou canst! I read it in thine eyes—­that mayst thou not!  No torture which I bear can, in its sum, draw nigh to the rage of that deep soul of thine, rent with longings never, never to be reached!  Harmachis, thou slave of slaves, from thy triumph-depths I snatch a deeper triumph, and conquered yet I conquer!  I spit upon thee—­I defy thee—­and, dying, doom thee to the torment of thy deathless love!  O Antony!  I come, my Antony!—­I come to thy own dear arms!  Soon I shall find thee, and, wrapped in a love undying and divine, together we will float through all the depths of space, and, lips to lips and eyes to eyes, drink of desires grown more sweet with every draught!  Or if I find thee not, then I shall sink in peace down the poppied ways of Sleep:  and for me the breast of Night, whereon I shall be softly cradled, will yet seem thy bosom, Antony!  Oh, I die!—­come, Antony—­and give me peace!”