ourselves, and we were
content. But now we think about ourselves, and we say to ourselves that
we are harsh and ill-favored indeed compared to the Golden Maid that
the Titan is so enchanted with. And we hate to see our own men praise
and admire her, and often, in our hearts, we would destroy her if we
could."

"That is true," the women said. And then a young woman cried out in a
most yearnful voice, "O tell us, you who are wise, how can we make
ourselves as beautiful as Pandora!"

Then said that woman who was thought to be wise, "This Golden Maid is
Lovely to look upon because she has lovely apparel and all the means of
keeping herself lovely. The gods have given her the ways, and, so her
skin remains fair, and her hair keeps its gold, and her lips are ever
red and her eyes shining. And I think that the means that she has of
keeping lovely are all in that jar that Epimetheus brought with her."

When the woman who was thought to be wise said this, those around her
were silent for a while. But then one arose and another arose, and they
stood and whispered together, one saying to the other that they should
go to the place where the jar had been left by Epimetheus, and that
they should take out of it the salves and the charms and the washes
that would leave them as beautiful as Pandora.

So the women went to that place. On their way they stopped at a pool
and they bent over to see themselves mirrored in it, and they saw
themselves with dusty and unkempt hair, with large and knotted hands,
with troubled eyes, and with anxious mouths.

They frowned as they looked upon their images, and they said in harsh
voices that in a while they would have ways of making themselves as
lovely as the Golden Maid.

And as they went on they saw Pandora. She was playing in a flowering
field, while Epimetheus, high as a man upon stilts, went gathering the
blossoms of the bushes for her. They went on, and they came at last to
the place where Epimetheus had left the jar that held Pandora's dower.

A great stone jar it was; there was no bird, nor flower, nor branch
painted upon it. It stood high as a woman's shoulder. And as the women
looked on it they thought that there were things enough in it to keep
them beautiful for all the days of their lives. But each one thought
that she should not be the last to get her hands into it.

Once the lid had been fixed tightly down on the jar. But the lid was
shifted a little now. As the hands of the