Then said the hero: "I am Peleus, and Zeus has given me the mastery
over thee. Wilt thou come with me, Thetis? Thou art my bride, given me
by him who is highest amongst the gods, and if thou wilt come with me,
thou wilt always be loved and reverenced by me."

"Unwillingly I leave the sea," she cried, "unwillingly I go with thee,
Peleus."

But life in the sea was not for her any more now that she was mastered.
She went to Peleus's ship and she went to Phthia, his country. And when
the hero and the sea goddess were wedded the immortal gods and
goddesses came to their hall and brought the bride and the bridegroom
wondrous gifts. The three sisters who are called the Fates came also.
These wise and ancient women said that the son born of the marriage of
Peleus and Thetis would be a man greater than Peleus himself.

III

Now although a son was born to her, and although this son had something
of the radiance of the immortals about him, Thetis remained forlorn and
estranged. Nothing that her husband did was pleasing to her. Prince
Peleus was in fear that the wildness of the sea would break out in her,
and that some great harm would be wrought in his house.

One night he wakened suddenly. He saw the fire upon his hearth and he
saw a figure standing by the fire. It was Thetis, his wife. The fire
was blazing around something that she held in her hands. And while she
stood there she was singing to herself a strange-sounding song.

And then he saw what Thetis held in her hands and what the fire was
blazing around; it was the child, Achilles.

Prince Peleus sprang from the bed and caught Thetis around the waist
and lifted her and the child away from the blazing fire. He put them
both upon the bed, and he took from her the child that she held by the
heel. His heart was wild within him, for the thought that wildness had
come over his wife, and that she was bent upon destroying their child.
But Thetis looked on him from under those goddess brows of hers and she
said to him: "By the divine power that I still possess I would have
made the child invulnerable; but the heel by which I held him has not
been endued by the fire and in that place some day he may be stricken.
All that the fire covered is invulnerable, and no weapon that strikes
there can destroy his life. His heel I cannot now make invulnerable,
for now the divine power is gone out of me."

When she said this Thetis looked full upon her husband, and never had
she