nary ones, so he
turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble
the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and
walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a
translation of the idyls.

"Sicily, Sicily!"

It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to
ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land
in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile
Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was
sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high
face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering
over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before
Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line,
revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering
flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into
the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he
remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull,
a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away
for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon!
Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest
and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important
than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he
cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus
and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he
looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis.
Medea, too, had been deserted--"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen!
All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived
about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor,
whence AEneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been
deserted. All the great love stories of the world had been lived
about these shores and islands; his own story! And he mused for a
long time on the accident--if it were an accident--which had led him
back to this sea. Or had he returned to these shores and islands
merely because there was no other sea in which one could yacht?
Hardly, and he remembered with pleasure that his story differed from
the ancient stories only in this, that Evelyn had fled from him, not
be from her. And for such a woeful reason! That she might repent her
sins in a convent on the edge of Wimbledon Common, whereas Dido was
desert