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Alex rushed to her side. She slipped her arm around him as once again Ramses advanced on her.
"What in God's name is the matter with you, Ramsey!" Alex protested.
"I tell you now, we are to speak, you and I, alone," Ramses said to her, ignoring her lover.
Her anger went before her words and her words went before her thoughts.
"You think you can force me to do your will! I'll pay you out for what you've done to me! I'll pay you in kind!"
He grabbed her, swinging her away from Alex, whose father moved in again to take his arm. She glanced back to see Alex vanishing as the crowds closed in front of him, Ramses forcing her deeper into the dancers, refusing to let her go, though she struggled, his right hand clutching her left wrist, his left hand locked on her waist.
All about them couples whirled to the deafening music and its deep throbbing rhythmic beat. He forced her into the dance as he towered over her, lifting her off her feet as he turned her about.
"Let go of me!" she hissed. "You think I'm the same mad creature you left in that hovel in old Cairo. You think I am your slave!"
"No, no, I can see you are different," dropping into the old Latin. "But who are you, really?"
"Your magic has restored my mind, my memory. All that I suffered--it is there, and I hate you now more truly than I did before."
How stunned he was; how he suffered. Was she supposed to pity him?
"You have always been magnificent at suffering!" She spat the words at him. "And in your judgments! But I am not your slave or your property. What you have brought back to life would be free to live."
"It is you," he whispered. "The Queen who was wise as well as impulsive? Who loved recklessly but knew always how to conquer and rule?"
"Yes, precisely. The Queen who begged you to share your gift with one mortal man, but you refused her. Selfish, spiteful and petty in the end."
"Oh, no, you know it is not true." Same old charm, same old persuasiveness. And the same fierce and unyielding will. "It would have been a ghastly error!"
"And I? Am I not an error!"
She struggled to free herself. She couldn't. Again he turned her in a great circle to the rhythm of the music, skirts brushing her as others danced around them, oblivious, it seemed, to her struggle.
"Last night you told me that when you were dying, you tried to call out to me," he said. "The venom of the snake had paralyzed you. Were you telling me the truth?"
Again she tried to pull loose. "Do not say these things to me!" she said. She jerked her left arm away from him, but he caught it again. Now the others did see what was happening. Heads were turning. A pair of dancers had stopped in alarm.
"Answer me," he demanded. "Did you try to call out to me in those last moments? Is that true?"
"You think that justifies what you have done!" She forced him to a halt. She would not be dragged along by him. "I was afraid. I was at death's door!" she confessed. "It was fear, not love! You think I could ever forgive you for letting Antony die?"
"Oh, it's you," he said softly. They stood motionless together. "It is really you. My Cleopatra, with all your duplicity and passion. It is you."
"Yes, and I speak the truth when I say I hate you," she cried, the tears springing to her eyes. "Ramses the Damned! I curse the day I let the light of the sun into your tomb. When your sweet mortal Julie Stratford is lying dead at your feet as Antony lay dead at mine, you will know the meaning of wisdom, of love, the power of she who always conquers and rules. Your Julie Stratford is mortal. Her neck can be snapped like a river reed."
Did she mean these words? She didn't know. She knew the hatred and all the love that had heated it, made it possible. In a fury she drew back, at last free of him, and turned to flee.
"No, you will not hurt her. You will not hurt Alex, either," he cried out in Latin. "Or anyone else."
She shoved the dancers out of her path. A woman screamed; a man stumbled into his partner. Others struggled to make way for her. She turned and saw him bearing down on her, calling out to her.
"I will put you back into the grave before I will let you do it. Into the darkness."
In terror, she plowed through the crowd before her. The air was rife with screams everywhere. But the door lay ahead, and freedom, and she ran towards it with all her strength.
"Wait, stop, listen to me," Ramses shouted.
Glancing back as she reached the doors, she saw that Alex had a hold of him. "Stop, Ramsey, let her go!" Other men were surrounding Ramses.
