long. Aphrodite didn't make her to sit as an old maid
carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus's and Lysistra's
purpose with half an eye."

"Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?"

The young mistress's eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was
quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold
front and a ready lie:

"_Ei!_ dear little lady, don't flash up so! I was only talking with Nania
about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom."

"I heard you quite otherwise," was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione
was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon's
downfall she had believed--what even her own mother had mildly derided--that
Democrates had been the author of her husband's ruin. And now that the
intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon
despair. Hermippus, however,--whatever his purpose,--was considerate, nay
kindly. He regarded Hermione's feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He
would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father
purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double
all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.

Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione's sun ever rise again?
Could she hope, across the end of the aeons, to clasp hands even in the dim
House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof,
dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to
the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.

"Downward, down the long dark pathway,
Past Oceanus's great streams,
Past the White Rock, past the Sun's gates
Downward to the land of Dreams:
There they reach the wide dim borders
Of the fields of asphodel,
Where the spectres and the spirits
Of wan, outworn mortals dwell."

But was this the home of Glaucon the Fair; should the young, the strong,
the pure in heart, share one condemnation with the mean and the guilty?
Homer the Wise left all hid. Yet he told of some not doomed to the common
lot. Thus ran the promise to Menelaus, espoused to Helen.

"Far away the gods shall bear you:
To the fair Elysian plains,
Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,
Where bright Rhadamanthus reigns:
Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,
But clear zephyrs from the west,
Singing round the streams of Ocean