Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/201

 III

Mucia found herself looking up into the very eyes Cleopatra of Egypt was to love so well twenty years later. All women admired Antony and liked him. Mucia liked him.

"You did not remember me really?" he began. "Am I not right?"

"No," she admitted, "I did not."

"No wonder," he agreed. "I went away scarcely more than a boy: I feel every inch a man now as I come home."

"You look it too," Mucia assured him, "and what is more you are."

She understood all the arts of coquetry and not least those by which women no longer young flatter youths. Antony responded to her words and tone. An atmosphere of intimacy enveloped them at once. From within the tent Pompeia glowered unnoticed, unheeded, forgotten.

"Do you really want to go over the camp?" Antony queried. "All camps are alike."

"But I have never seen a camp," Mucia exclaimed.

"Never seen a camp!" Antony echoed. "Do you mean that?"

"I truthfully do," Mucia confirmed.