Page:Afterglow; pastels of Greek Egypt, 69 B.C. (IA afterglowpastels00buck).pdf/51

Rh ful smile which trembled at the corners of her childish mouth. As she was beautiful and much desired, she had selected her lovers daintily, choosing only those who were fair and who pleased her, refusing herself to the others. And her fame had spread for a day, even over Alexandria where beauty was seen on every hand and over which the perfume of love hovered like a luminous cloud, as the poets had said.

Even the philosophers had come to her, and she had received them with a little laugh, proud of her triumph over them, and had pulled their grey beards and ruffled their hair, mimicking their ponderous attempts to retain a profound dignity. But these men had pleased her but little, for she soon perceived their hypocrisy and listened with secret contempt to the weighty arguments and involved phrases by which they sought to include their pas-