tful omen! I am terrified!"

Glaucon's hands dropped at her cry. He himself paled slightly. In one of
his moods of abstraction he had taken the small knife from his belt and
begun to pare his nails,--to do which after a sacrifice was reputed an
infallible means of provoking heaven's anger. The friends were grave and
silent. The athlete gave a forced laugh.

"The goddess will be merciful to-day. To-morrow I will propitiate her with
a goat."

"Now, now, not to-morrow," urged Hermione, with white lips, but her
husband refused.

"The goddess is surfeited with sacrifices this morning. She would forget
mine."

Then he led the rest, elbowing the way through the increasing swarms of
young and old, and down into the half-deserted city. Democrates left them
in the Agora, professing great stress of duties.

"Strange man," observed Cimon, as he walked away; "what has he this past
month upon his mind? That Persian spy, I warrant. But the morning wanes.
It's a long way to Colonus. 'Let us drink, for the sun is in the zenith.'
So says Alcaeus--and I love the poet, for he like myself is always thirsty."

The three went on to the knoll of Colonus where Glaucon dwelt. Cimon was
overrunning with puns and jests, but the others not very merry. The omen
of Glaucon's thoughtlessness, or something else, made husband and wife
silent, yet it was a day when man or maid should have felt their spirits
rise. The sky had never been brighter, not in Athens. Never had the
mountains and sea spread more gloriously. From the warm olive-groves
sounded the blithesome note of the Attic grasshopper. The wind sweeping
over the dark cypresses by the house set their dark leaves to talking. The
afternoon passed in pleasure, friends going and coming; there was
laughter, music, and good stories. Hermione at least recovered part of her
brightness, but her husband, contrary to all custom, remained taciturn,
even melancholy. At last as the gentle tints of evening began to cover
hill and plain and the red-tiled roofs of the ample city, all the friends
were gone, saving only Cimon, and he--reckless fellow--was well able to
dispense with companionship, being, in the words of Theognis, "not
absolutely drunk, nor sober quite." Thus husband and wife found themselves
alone together on the marble bench beneath the old cypress.

"Oh, _makaire_! dearest and best," asked Hermione, her hands touching his
face, "is it the omen that makes you grow so sad? For the sun of you