"Quick, Iras," Cleopatra said that morning, when she wished to be especially beautiful. "Take off my fillet and try to surpass yourself." She sat down before her dressing-table, which was covered with combs of different sizes, iridescent glass bottles, tiny jars filled with unguents, dainty puffs in boxes of powdered orris-root and other cosmetics; gold turtles, whose pierced shells held long hairpins. Cleopatra bent her head, and while the negro women, immobile as bronze statues, held a silver mirror that she might see her reflection, Iras passed a comb of amber tortoise-shell through the Queen's hair. No one was more skilful than the young Persian girl in handling the Queen's flowing tresses. It was like play for her to spread them out, then turn and twist them, lift them up and arrange them in a different fashion each day. These changes of coiffure made an inexhaustible subject of conversation between the Queen and her attendant. They discussed them, pronounced them more or less becoming, tried new ornaments fit for varying occasions. Which was most suitable for to-day? There was no time to lose in experiments. They must decide without delay how Cleopatra would receive the messenger from Mark Antony. After a moment's thought she decided against the crown, the ancestral head-dress, the diadem; they were all too pretentious, too formal. It was as a woman, a beautiful woman, that she would appear before this ambassador. She chose the Athenian style: a simple cord attached by a ribbon above the nape of her neck, and, confining the thick waves of her hair, three bands outlined her delicate head. Iras was no less expert in the use of rouge and perfumes. In Phoenicia she had become familiar with salves and ointments compounded from roses and lilies and the blossoms of the privet. Prepared by her these unguents had a marvellous effect in making limbs supple, and she alone knew how to make flesh shine like polished marble by rubbing it with a powder made of crushed mother-of-pearl. Cleopatra never allowed any one but her dear Iras to put the roses in her cheeks, to accentuate the arch of her splendid eyebrows, and to darken the natural shadows under her eyes by the skilful use of a swan's feather touched with sibium. When Cleopatra was thus shod, coifed, and redolent from head to foot with sweet perfumes, the ladies in charge of the robes came in. They brought in great chests in which the robes lay without a crease to spoil their freshness. Raising the covers they laid out two, three, four, until the Queen had made her choice. She chose a saffron-coloured silk tunic, embroidered with narcissus blossoms. Fastened to her shoulders by two amber clasps the tunic left her arms and bosom bare. Above this a transparent drapery hung, woven by the women of Cos and made, so the legend went, of the condensed vapours of the morning mists of springtime, the tissue that is known to-day as "the Virgin's threads."