"She is so fair, I wonder that Zeus does not haste from Olympus to
enthrone her in place of Hera."

The bow-bearer laughed.

"No, I crave for her only a mortal husband. Though there are few in
Persia, in Media, in the wide East, to whom I dare entrust her.
Perhaps,"--his laugh grew lighter,--"I would do well to turn my eyes
westward."

Glaucon did not see Roxana again the next day nor for several following,
but in those days he thought much less on Hermione and on Athens.

CHAPTER XVIII

DEMOCRATES'S TROUBLES RETURN

All through that year to its close and again to the verge of springtime
the sun made violet haze upon the hills and pure fire of the bay at
Eleusis-by-the-Sea. Night by night the bird song would be stilled in the
old olives along the dark waters. There Hermione would sit looking off
into the void, as many another in like plight has sat and wearily waited,
asking of the night and the sea the questions that are never answered. As
the bay shimmered under the light of morning, she could gaze toward the
brown crags of Salamis and the open AEgean beyond. The waves kept their
abiding secret. The tall triremes, the red-sailed fishers' boats, came and
went from the havens of Athens, but Hermione never saw the ship that had
borne away her all.

The roar and scandal following the unmasking of Glaucon had long since
abated. Hermippus--himself full five years grayer on account of the
calamity--had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was
less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn
and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old
Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a
little hope and comfort. But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break,
her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long
before her father's wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard him
praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly
prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus's hidden
meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.

"Her Ladyship has taken on terribly, to be sure, but I told her mother
'when a fire blazes too hot, it burns out simply the faster.' Democrates
is just the man to console in another year."

"Yes," answered the other wiseacre, "she's far too young and pretty to
stay unwedded very