A Hebe, sweet in years and looks, filled the wine cups of the King and Queen. Antony, lifting his, hesitated on the draught. His eyes, already inflamed, sought his partner’s, half covertly, half challengingly. Cleopatra laughed, and putting her glass to her full lips, drank. She followed a formula in doing so, conceding it agreeably to the very madness of his passion. He was haunted, since his defeat, with the thought that she would poison him to save herself. And yet he loved her. It was not the first or the last time in the history of worship that the supreme egotism had evoked the supreme adoration. Presently, amidst some amorous fondlings, the Queen took the lily chaplet from her hair and shredded a petal or two from it into her lord’s wine. “Do you the same by mine, my soul,” she whispered, “and let us drink the very perfume of each other’s wit.” His eyes burning, he lifted the wreath from his brow and obeyed, dropping a flower into her cup. As he raised his own to drink, she stopped him, coaxed the vessel from his hand, and calling the little Hebe to her, bade her take it. “Thou art fair,” she said. “My lord pledges thee. Drink to his passing fancy.” Like one of those woodland growths which, being torn, flush a faint, slow sapphire through all their tender flesh, the child’s face, as she stood, seemed to sicken to the hue of death. She shuddered; her limbs began to fail her. “Drink!” said Cleopatra, rising in her place with a smile. “Drink, child--for thine own sake.” Better swift death than nameless torture. The poor slave drained the cup, and, casting it, with a scream, from her, dropped upon the pavement, a glittering, voluble shadow, writhing to its own reflection. Antony had risen, the company with him--speechless all, breathing out the long minutes of the tragedy. It amounted to no more than this, that the child had been so young and lovely--and that now she was spoiled. At the end, the Queen, scornful, magnificent, turned her burning eyes on her lover’s face. There was a look in its ruined strength which made her pause a moment. “Read there, sweet lord,” she said, “the groundlessness, the unworthiness of thy suspicions. Were my love false, what precautions of thine could avail against my wit and will to end thee?” He turned, still without a word, and, the light glinting a moment on his grizzling hair and fuddled, frowning eyes, passed from the banquet. Then, coming down into the hall, Cleopatra, with a wave of her hand, dismissed the company, the slaves, the musicians--all without exception, save the Decurion Dentatus, whom she called to her.