ersian faded from Hermione's mind.

* * * * * * *

It was a merry party such as often went down to the havens of Athens in
the springtime and summer: a dozen gentlemen, old and young, for the most
part married, and followed demurely by their wives with the latter's
maids, and many a stout Thracian slave tugging hampers of meat and drink.
Laughter there was, admixed with wiser talk; friends walking by twos and
threes, with Themistocles, as always, seeming to mingle with all and to
surpass every one both in jests and in wisdom. So they fared down across
the broad plain-land to the harbours, till the hill Munychia rose steep
before them. A scramble over a rocky, ill-marked way led to the top; then
before them broke a second view comparable almost to that from the Rock of
Athena: at their feet lay the four blue havens of Athens, to the right
Phaleron, closer at hand the land-locked bay of Munychia, beyond that Zea,
beyond that still a broader sheet--Peiraeus, the new war-harbour of Athens.
They could look down on the brown roofs of the port-town, the forest of
masts, the merchantman unloading lumber from the Euxine, the merchantman
loading dried figs for Syria; but most of all on the numbers of long black
hulls, some motionless on the placid harbour, some propped harmlessly on
the shore. Hermione clouded as she saw them, and glanced away.

"I do not love your new fleet, Themistocles," she said, frowning at the
handsome statesman; "I do not love anything that tells so clearly of war.
It mars the beauty."

"Rather you should rejoice we have so fair a wooden wall against the
Barbarian, dear lady," answered he, quite at ease. "What can we do to
hearten her, Democrates?"

"Were I only Zeus," rejoined the orator, who never was far from his best
friend's wife, "I would cast two thunderbolts, one to destroy Xerxes, the
second to blast Themistocles's armada,--so would the Lady Hermione be
satisfied."

"I am sorry, then, you are not the Olympian," said the woman, half smiling
at the pleasantry. Cimon interrupted them. Some of the party had caught a
sun-burned shepherd in among the rocks, a veritable Pan in his shaggy
goat-skin. The bribe of two obols brought him out with his pipe. Four of
the slave-boys fell to dancing. The party sat down upon the burnt
grass,--eating, drinking, wreathing poppy-crowns, and watching the nimble
slaves and the ships that crawled like ants in the haven and bay below.
T