evil days from the
subtle words of Eos, and he departed and dwelt in another land. So the
time passed on, until many weeks and months had gone by, and Prokris
mourned and wept in the house of Erechtheus, until the brightness of
her eye was dimmed and her voice had lost its gladness. Day after day
she sought throughout all the land for Kephalos, day after day she
went up the hill of Hymettos, and as she looked towards the sea, she
said, "Surely he will come back again; ah, Kephalos, thou knowest not
the love which thou hast forsaken." Thus she pined away in her sorrow,
although to all who were around her she was as gentle and as loving as
ever. Her father was now old and weak, and he knew that he must soon
die, but it grieved him most of all that he must leave his child in a
grief more bitter than if Kephalos had remained to comfort her. So
Erechtheus died, and the people honored him as one of the heroes of
the land, but Prokris remained in his house desolate, and all who saw
her pitied her for her true love and her deep sorrow. At last she felt
that Kephalos would return no more, and that she could no more be
happy until she went to her father in the bright home of the heroes
and the gods.

Then a look of peace and loving patience came over her fair face, and
she roamed with a strange gladness through every place where Kephalos
had wandered with her; and so it came to pass that one day Prokris sat
resting in the early morning on the eastern slopes of Mount Hymettos,
when suddenly she beheld a man coming near to her. The dress was
strange, but she half thought she knew his tall form and the light
step as he came up the hill. Presently he came close to her, and she
felt as if she were in a strange dream. The sight of his face and the
glance of his eye carried her back to the days that were past, and she
started up and ran towards him, saying, "O Kephalos, thou art come
back at last; how couldst thou forsake me so long?" But the stranger
answered, in a low and gentle voice (for he saw that she was in great
sorrow), "Lady, thou art deceived. I am a stranger come from a far
country, and I seek to know the name of this land." Then Prokris sat
down again on the grass, and clasped her hands, and said, slowly, "It
is changed and I can not tell how; yet surely it is the voice of
Kephalos." Then she turned to the stranger, and said, "O stranger, I
am mourning for Kephalos, whom I have loved and lost; he, too, came
from a far lan