gh his heart, but now it surely seemed to him that the lips were
cold no longer. He felt one of the little hands, and no more did it
remain heavy and cold and stiff in his touch, but lay in his own hand,
soft and living and warm. He softly laid his fingers on the marble
hair, and lo, it was the soft and wavy burnished golden hair of his
desire. Again, reverently as he had laid his offerings that day on
the altar of Venus, Pygmalion kissed her lips. And then did Galatea,
with warm and rosy cheeks, widely open her eyes, like pools in a dark
mountain stream on which the sun is shining, and gaze with timid
gladness into his own.

There are no after tales of Pygmalion and Galatea. We only know that
their lives were happy and that to them was born a son, Paphos, from
whom the city sacred to Aphrodite received its name. Perhaps Aphrodite
may have smiled sometimes to watch Pygmalion, once the scorner of
women, the adoring servant of the woman that his own hands had first
designed.

PHAETON

"The road, to drive on which unskilled were Phaeton's hands."

Dante--_Purgatorio_.

To Apollo, the sun-god, and Clymene, a beautiful ocean-nymph, there
was born in the pleasant land of Greece a child to whom was given the
name of Phaeton, the Bright and Shining One. The rays of the sun
seemed to live in the curls of the fearless little lad, and when at
noon other children would seek the cool shade of the cypress groves,
Phaeton would hold his head aloft and gaze fearlessly up at the brazen
sky from whence fierce heat beat down upon his golden head.

"Behold, my father drives his chariot across the heavens!" he proudly
proclaimed. "In a little while I, also, will drive the four snow-white
steeds."

His elders heard the childish boast with a smile, but when Epaphos,
half-brother to Apollo, had listened to it many times and beheld the
child, Phaeton, grow into an arrogant lad who held himself as though
he were indeed one of the Immortals, anger grew in his heart. One day
he turned upon Phaeton and spoke in fierce scorn:

"Dost say thou art son of a god? A shameless boaster and a liar art
thou! Hast ever spoken to thy divine sire? Give us some proof of thy
sonship! No more child of the glorious Apollo art thou than are the
vermin his children, that the sun breeds in the dust at my feet."

For a moment, before the cruel taunt, the lad was stricken into
silence, and then, his pride aflame, his young voice shaking wi