Worn out with the horrors of the long day, the Greek girl was trembling. The carnage had frozen her blood. At the moment of the Queen's flight, although her terror was abated, she had felt that disaster, greater than any that had yet come, was close upon them. Now she could only say:
Iras was younger and had more faith in the power of love.
"Go to him, Madame, see how he suffers! Your presence will comfort him!"
Cleopatra took two or three steps toward him, but Eros warned his master, and Antony, clinging to his despair as to, a saving grace, shook his head as a sign that he wished to be left alone.
For three days and three nights he stayed there, without consolation. All his limbs seemed dead. He refused all food and was unconscious of the thirst that dried his tongue; but his mind was keenly awake to torture him.
His slave knew his humiliation of grief and said at last:
"Will you destroy the life that is so precious to us?"
"My life has no longer any value; glory was its only excuse for being. I am now like a man robbed and left naked by the roadside," replied Antony.
"I have no friends. Who stays by you in adversity? Foreseeing my defeat, no doubt those on whom I most counted have already deserted."
Crouching before the man whom he had always looked on as a demigod, Eros embraced his knees.
"Others are faithful. I know those who would shed their last drop of blood to save you."
"Yes, you, my poor Eros, I know it well. But it is not your blood that I need now, but a promise."
Eros looked at him lovingly, submissively.
"Swear that the instant I command you to do it, you will deliver me from the curse of existence!"
Startled by these words, the slave jumped up, rebellious.
"Go away and let me hear no more of your devotion!"
It was brutal treatment to the slave who had just offered his life and would have given it willingly. He protested, stifling a sob:
"My sword, my hands, my life, all are yours, my master. But as to the oath that you demand, if I tried to execute it, the hand that seized the weapon would, in spite of all that I could do, pierce my heart rather than yours!"
Left to herself, now burning, now shivering with fever, Cleopatra was forlorn. Was Antony going to die? Did he no longer love her? She went over in memory the days when, at the least sign from her, he was ready to crush her to his heart. How many messages she had written him in these last three days that he had not taken the trouble to open; and again she had the torturing thought that she herself had destroyed her own happiness.