How can you men, who only command and desire, understand the happiness of sacrifice?
I am a woman; my birth does not exalt me above any feeling of my sex; and what I now ask is not as Queen but as woman." "If that is the case," Alexas answered with his hand upon his heart, "you impose silence upon me; for were I to confess to the woman Cleopatra what agitates my soul, I should be guilty of a double crime--I would violate a promise and betray the friend who confided his noble wife to my protection." "Now the darkness is becoming too dense for me," replied Cleopatra, raising her head with repellent pride.

"Or, if I choose to raise the veil, I must point out to you the barriers-- "Which surround the Queen," replied the Syrian with an obsequious bow.
"There you behold the fact.

It is an impossibility to separate the woman from the princess.

So far as I am concerned, I do not wish to anger the former against the presumptuous adorer, and I desire to yield to the latter the obedience which is her due.

Therefore I entreat you to forget the armlet and its many painful associations, and pass to the consideration of other matters.