be
that, here, between these purple hills and the glistening sea, there will
come that battle beside which the strife of Achilles and Hector before
Troy shall pass as nothing!"

Themistocles shook his head.

"We do not know; we are dice in the high gods' dice-boxes.

" 'Man all vainly shall scan the mind of the Prince of Olympus.'

"We can say nothing wiser than that. We can but use our Attic mother wit,
and trust the rest to destiny. Let us be satisfied if we hope that destiny
is not blind."

They drifted many moments in silence.

"The sun sinks lower," spoke Democrates, at length; "so back again to the
havens."

On the return Themistocles once more vowed he caught a glimpse of the
skiff of the unknown foreigners, but Democrates called it mere phantasy.
Hermione met them at the Peiraeus, and the party wandered back through the
gathering dusk to the city, where each little group went its way.
Themistocles went to his own house, where he said he expected Sicinnus;
Cimon and Democrates sought a tavern for an evening cup; Glaucon and
Hermione hastened to their house in the Colonus suburb near the trickling
Cephissus, where in the starlit night the tettix(4) in the black old
olives by the stream made its monotonous music, where great fireflies
gleamed, where Philomela the nightingale called, and the tall plane trees
whispered softly to the pines. When Hermione fell asleep, she had
forgotten about the coming of the Persian, and dreamed that Glaucon was
Eros, she was Psyche, and that Zeus was giving her the wings of a
butterfly and a crown of stars.

Democrates went home later. After the heady Pramnian at the tavern, he
roved away with Cimon and others to serenade beneath the lattice of a
lady--none too prudish--in the Ceramicus quarter. But the fair one was cruel
that night, and her slaves repelled the minstrels with pails of hot water
from an upper window. Democrates thereupon quitted the party. His head was
very befogged, but he could not expel one idea from it--that Themistocles
had revealed that day a priceless secret, that the statesman and Glaucon
and he himself were the only men who shared it, and that it was believed
that Glaucon had visited the Babylonish carpet-seller. Joined to this was
an overpowering consciousness that Helen of Troy was not so lovely as
Hermione of Eleusis. When he came to his lodgings, however, his wits
cleared in a twinkling after he had read two letters. The first was short.

"Th