“I have got a lover! Yes, I’ve a lover! Why should I not have a sweetheart like everybody else, the same as you and my mother, and my aunt, and the lowest woman in Egypt? A lover? Of a surety! And why not, prithee, seeing that for six months past, I am a woman, and you have not yet found me a husband? Aye, Berenice, I have a lover. I’m no longer a little girl. I know now! I know! Be silent—say nothing, for I know more than you. I, too, have clasped my arms till they were fit to snap, over the naked back of a man who thought he was my master. I, too, have crooked my toes in the empty air, feeling as if life was leaving me, and I’ve died a hundred times over in the same way as you have swooned, but immediately afterwards, Berenice, I was on my feet, upstanding, erect! Say naught to me, for I am ashamed to claim you as my Sovereign—you, who are someone’s slave!” Little Cleopatra drew herself up to her full height, endeavouring to appear as tall as possible. She took her head in her hands, like an Asiatic queen trying on a tiara. ill-061 Seated on the bed, her feet tucked under her, the elder sister listened, and then knelt, so she could come near to the young lass and place her hands on Cleopatra’s sloping, slender shoulders. “So you’ve a lover?” Berenice now spoke timidly, almost respectfully. “If you don’t believe me, you can look,” replied the girl, curtly. “When do you see him?” sighed Berenice. “Three times a day.” “Where?” “Do you want me to tell you?” “Yes.” “How comes it that you do not know this?” interrogated Cleopatra in her turn. “I know nothing, not even what goes on at the Palace. Demetrios is the only subject of conversation I care about. I have not watched over you as I should have done, my child. All this is my fault.” “Watch me if you like. When I can no longer have my own way, I’ll kill myself. Therefore, little care I, whatever happens!” “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. ill-062 _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. “Follow me. It’s rather far,” she said, turning to her sister. In the middle of the passage was a staircase which she ascended. Then she glided along a never-ending colonnade, opened several doors, walking on carpets, white marble slabs and the mosaic floors of a score of empty, silent apartments.