Sardou's Cleopatra — page 143: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

128 SARDOU’S CLEOPATRA. hope of seeing him again, ready to give my scep- ter for one hour of him! Poor fool that I was, wrapped in tne memory of passed joys, asking myself: ‘Whereis he? -Why does he delay ?’ Imagining that his thoughts were all of me, that he would marry me before assembled Rome, bear me away with him, and repeat to me again the passionate words that have proved my ruin, while I wept with love in his arms! Oh! Coward! Coward! Coward!” And, in a paroxysm of rage and despair, the unhappy queen flung herself upon the couch, and rolled and sobbed there with the ferocity of a wild- cat. | With white faces, Charmian and Iras looked on, not daring to speak a word of sympathy or comfort. Gradually the queen grew calmer, the parox- ysm abated, the sobs and cries died away, and finally she raised her tear-stained face from where it had been buried in a tiger-skin. Her head- dress had fallen off, and her beautiful hair hung | in dishevelled masses about her shoulders. In her hopeless anguish she might have served as a model for Niobe. With the pleading gesture of a tired child, she stretched out her arms to her GComicbooks.co