ZEUS.

Oh, not now! Some other time! [Graciously dismisses the PRIEST.]

ZEUS [after a long pause].

The attitude of my family, in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent occasions on Olympus itself on which my Supreme Godhead was disturbed by flashes of what I should be forced to describe as exasperation, states of mind in which I formed—and indeed executed—the sudden project of breaking something. These were, I believe, simply the result of an excessive sense of responsibility. I am not one of those who conceive that the duty of deity is to sit passive beside the cup of nectar. Here on this island, in the permanent absence of that refreshment, I reflect (I perceive that I shall have very frequent opportunities for reflection) that I was perhaps only too anxious to preserve the harmony of heaven. My sense of decorum—may it not have been excessive? From below, as I imagine, from the stations occupied—I will not say by the inanimate or half-animate creation, such as insects, or men, or minerals—but by the demi-gods, I take it that the dignity and orbic beauty of our court appeared sublimely immaculate. In the inner circle, alas! no one knows better than I do that there were—well, dissensions. I will go further, in candour to myself, and admit that these occasionally led to excesses. I cannot charge my recollection with my having done anything to excuse or encourage these. The personal conduct of the Sovereign was always, I cannot but believe, above reproach. But the eccentricities—if I may style them so—of certain of my children were sometimes regrettable. I wonder that they did not age me; they would do so immediately in my present condition. But in this island, where we are to swarm like animalcules in a drop of water, I shall be relieved of all responsibility. Where there is no one to notice that errors are committed, no errors are committed. As the person of most experience in the whole world, I do not mind stating my ripe opinion that a fault which has no effect upon political conditions is in no sensible degree a fault at all. Pallas would contend the point, I suppose, but I am at ease. I shall not allow the conduct of my children, except as it shall regard myself, to affect my good-humour in the slightest degree.

[PHOEBUS enters, slowly pacing across the terrace.]

ZEUS.

Your planet seems to have recovered something of its tone, Phoebus.

PHOEBUS.

If, father, you regard—as you have every right to do—your venerable person as the centre of my interests, I rejoice to allow that this seems to be the case.

ZEUS [with a touch of reserve].

I meant that the sun shows a tendency to return to its forgotten orbit. It is quite warm here out of the wind. [More genially.] But as to myself, I admit a great recovery in my spirits. I have given up fretting for Iris, who was certainly lost on our way here, and Pallas has been showing me a curious little jewel she brought with her, which has created in me a kind of wistful cheeriness. I do not remember to have experienced anything of the kind before.

PHOEBUS.

I declare I believe that you will adapt yourself as well as the rest of us to this anomalous existence.

ZEUS.

We shall see; and I shall have so much time now, that I may even—what I am sure ought to gratify you, Phoebus,—be able to give my attention to the fine arts. A fallen monarch can always defy adversity by forming a collection of curiosities.

PHOEBUS.

If you make the gem of which Pallas is so proud the nucleus of your cabinet, I feel convinced that it will give you lasting satisfaction. And we are so poor now that it can never be complete, and therefore never become tiresome. But what was it that the oracle of Nemea amused and puzzled us by saying, "To form a collection is well, yet to take a walk is better"? I will attend your Majesty to your apartments, and then wander in these extensive woods.

[Exeunt.



X

[A dell below the house, with a white poplar-tree growing alone. Under it HERACLES sits, in an attitude of deep dejection, his club fallen at his feet, a horn empty at his side. To him enters EROS.]

EROS.

I have been congratulating our friends on their surpassing cheerfulness. Even Zeus is displaying a marvellous longanimity in his adverse state, and Pallas is positively frivolous. We must have disembarked, however, upon the island of Paradox, for everything goes by contraries; here I find you, Heracles, commonly so serene and uplifted, sunken in the pit of depression. You should squeeze the breath out of your melancholy, as you did out of Hera's snakes so long ago.

HERACLES.

That was a foolish tale. Do you not recollect that I am not as the rest of you?

EROS.

Come, man, brighten up! You look as sulky as you did when I broke your bow and arrows, and set Aphrodite laughing at you. But I have learned manners, and the goddesses only smile now. Cheer up! How is your destiny a whit different from ours?

HERACLES.

That rude old story about Alcmena, Eros—it is impossible that you can be the dupe of that? When I hunted lions on Cithaeron—that really was a gentlemanlike sport, my friend—when I hunted lions I was not a god. Gods don't hunt lions, Eros; I have not gone a-hunting since that curious affair on Mount OEta. You remember it?

EROS.

I have preferred to forget it.

HERACLES.

Only an immortal can afford wilfully to forget, and I—well, you know as well as I do that I am only a mortal canonised. I never understood the incident, I confess. I lay down among the ferns to sleep, after an unusually heavy day's bag of monsters. It was sultry weather; I woke to an oppressive sense of singeing, I found myself enveloped in a blaze of leaves and brushwood.... But I bore you, and what does it matter now? What does anything matter?

EROS.

No, no; pray continue! I am excessively interested. You throw a light on something that has always puzzled me, something that——

HERACLES.

A dense black smoke blinded and numbed me. The next moment, as it seemed—perhaps it was the next day—I was hustled up through the aether to Olympus, and dumped down at the foot of Zeus' throne. Perhaps you remember?

EROS.

Yes, for I was there.

HERACLES.

All of you were there. And Zeus came down and took me by the wrist. Olympus rang with shouts and the clapping of hands. I was hailed with unanimity as an immortal; the ambrosia melted between my charred lips; I rose up amongst you all, immaculate and fresh. But when, or how, or wherefore I have never known. And now I shall never care to know.

EROS.

You are a strange mixture, Heracles; strangely contradictory. You never quailed before any scaly horror, you never spared a truculent robber or a noisome beast, nor avoided a laborious act——

HERACLES.

These might be quoted, I should have thought, as instances of my consistency.

EROS.

Yes, but then (you must really forgive me) your weakness in the matter of Omphale did seem, to those who knew you not, like want of self-respect. I have the reputation of shrinking, in the pursuit of pleasure, from no fantastic disguise, but I never sat spinning in the garments of a servant-maid. You must have looked a strange daughter of the plough, Heracles. I blush for you to think of it.

HERACLES.

It was odd, certainly. Yet if you cannot comprehend it, Eros, I despair of explaining it to anybody. I should never do it again. You must admit I showed no want of firmness afterwards in dealing with Hebe, but then, she never interested me. Is she here? But do not reply, I am not anxious to learn.

EROS.

Your dejection passes beyond all bounds. You cannot have been shown the singularly cheerful little jewel which Pallas has brought with her? It raises every one's spirits.

HERACLES.

It will not raise mine; for all of you, Eros, have been immortals from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour on the moral palate. But the taste of it was known of old to me, and I am not its dupe. It simply carries me back to the ancient weary round of ceaseless struggle, unending battle, incessant renascence of the sprouting heads of Hydra; to all that from which the windless Olympus was a refuge. Hope is presented—to one who has tasted it and who knows that it is futile—without reawakening, under such new conditions as we have here, any zest of adventure. The jewel of Pandora may be exhilarating to fallen immortality; it has no lustre whatever for a backsliding mortal.

[Sounds of laughter are heard, and steps ascending from the shore.]

EROS [to HERACLES].

Draw your lion's skin about you less negligently, Heracles; I hear visitants approaching. You are not in the woodways of OEta.

[The OCEANIDES rush in from the lower woodlands. They are carrying torches, and arrive in a condition of the highest exhilaration. EROS proceeds a step or two to meet them, with a smile and a mock reverence. HERACLES, brooding over his knees, does not even raise his eyes at their clamorous entry.]

EROS.

Are you proceeding to set our Father Zeus on fire, or do you intend to repeat on our unwilling Heracles the rites of canonisation? Have a care with those absurd flambeaux; you will put all the underwood aflame. What are you doing with torches?

AMPHITRITE.

It was Hephaestus who gave them to us to hold. He is in a cave down there by the sea, making the most ingenious things in the darkness. He called us in to hold these lights——

DORIS.

And oh, Eros, we had such fun, teasing him——

PITHO.

He was quite angry at last——

AMPHITRITE.

And threatened to nail us to the cliff——

PITHO.

And off we ran, and left him in the dark.

DORIS.

He is coming after us. I never felt so frightened.

AMPHITRITE.

I never enjoyed myself anywhere so much.

PITHO.

Come away, come away! If he is going to pursue, let us give him a long chase, and leave him panting at last!

[The OCEANIDES escape, in a tumult of laughter, through the upper woods, as HEPHAESTUS, limping heavily, and much out of breath, appears from below.]

HEPHAESTUS

The rogues, the rogues!

EROS.

What a cataract of animal spirits! I am afraid, Hephaestus, that you do not escape, even here, from the echoes of the laughter of heaven.

HERACLES [savagely].

Follow them, and strike them down. Take my club, Hephaestus, if you have lost your hammer.

HEPHAESTUS.

Strike them! Strike the darling rogues? I would as soon wrap your too-celebrated tunic about a little playful marmozet. What is the matter with you, Heracles?

HERACLES.

What change, indeed, has come over you, you sulky artificer? Time was when your pincers would have met in the flesh of maid or man who disturbed you in your work. Have you left your forge to cool for the mere pleasure of clambering after these ridiculous children! Go back to it, Hephaestus, go back and be ashamed.

HEPHAESTUS.

You do not seem deeply engaged yourself. You look sourer and idler than the lion's head that dangles at your shoulder. The days are long here, though not too long. My handicraft will spare me for half an hour to sport with these exquisite and affable fragilities. I rather enjoy being laughed at. On Olympus I was rarely troubled by such teasing attentions. The little ones seem to enjoy themselves in their exile, and, to say true, so do I. My work was carried on, I admit, much more smoothly and surely than it can be here, and my hand, I am afraid, in crossing the sea, has lost much of its infallible cunning. But I enjoy the exercise, and I look onward to the art as I never did before, and I seem to have more leisure. Can you explain it, Eros?

EROS.

I do not attempt to do so, but I feel a similar and equally surprising serenity. Heracles is insensible to it, it seems, and he gives me a sort of reason.

HEPHAESTUS.

What is it?

EROS.

Well ... I am not sure that.... Perhaps I ought to leave him to explain it.

HERACLES.

You would not be able to comprehend me. I am not sure that I myself——

[Two of the OCEANIDES re-enter, much more seriously than before, and with an eager importance of gesture.]

AMPHITRITE.

We are not playing now. We have a message from Zeus, Hephaestus. He says that he is waiting impatiently for the sceptre you are making for him.

DORIS.

Yes, you must hurry back to your cave. And we are longing to see what ornament you are putting on the sceptre. Let us come with you. We will hold the torches for you as steadily as if we were made of marble.

HEPHAESTUS.

Come, then, come. Let us descend together. I hope that my science has not quitted me. We will see whether even on this rugged shore and with these uncouth instruments, I cannot prove to Zeus that I am still an artist. Come, I am in a hurry to begin. Give me your hands, Amphitrite and Doris.

[Exeunt.



XI

[The glen, through which the stream, slightly flooded by a night's rain, runs faintly turbid. DIONYSUS, earnestly engaged in angling, does not hear the approach of AESCULAPIUS.]

AESCULAPIUS [in a high, voluble key].

It is not to me but to you, O ruddy son of Semele, that the crowds of invalids will throng, if you cultivate this piscatory art so eagerly, since to do nothing, serenely, in the open air, without becoming fatigued, is to storm the very citadel of ill-health, and——

DIONYSUS [testily, without turning round].

Hush! hush!... I felt a nibble.

AESCULAPIUS [in a whisper, flinging himself upon the grass].

It was in such a secluded spot as this that Apollo heard the trout at Aroanius sing like thrushes.

DIONYSUS.

How these poets exaggerate! The trout sang, I suppose, like the missel-thrush.

AESCULAPIUS.

What song has the missel-thrush?

DIONYSUS.

It does not sing at all. Nor do trout.

AESCULAPIUS.

You are sententious, Dionysus.

DIONYSUS.

No, but closely occupied. I am intent on the subtle movements of my rod, round which my thoughts and fancies wind and blossom till they have made a thyrsus of it. Now, however, I shall certainly catch no more fish, and so I may rest and talk to you. Are you searching for simples in this glen?

AESCULAPIUS.

To tell you the plain truth, I am waiting for Nike. She has given me an appointment here.

DIONYSUS.

I have not seen her since we arrived on this island.

AESCULAPIUS.

You have seen her, but you have not recognised her. She goes about in a perpetual incognito. Poor thing, in our flight from Olympus she lost all her attributes—her wings dropped off, her laurel was burned, she flung her armour away, and her palm-tree obstinately refused to up-root itself.

DIONYSUS.

No doubt at this moment it is obsequiously rustling over the odious usurper.

AESCULAPIUS.

It was always rather a poor palm-tree. What Nike misses most are her wings. She was excessively dejected when we first arrived, but Pallas very kindly allowed her to take care of the jewel for half an hour. Nike—if still hardly recognisable—is no longer to be taken for Niobe.

DIONYSUS [rising to his feet].

I shall do well, however, to go before she comes.

AESCULAPIUS.

By no means. I should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger.

DIONYSUS.

Not always; sometimes my panthers turned and bit her. But my panthers and my vines are gone to keep her laurels and her palm-tree company. I think I will not stay, Aesculapius. But what does Nike want with you?

[Slowly and pensively descending from the upper woods, NIKE enters.]

DIONYSUS.

I was excusing myself, Nike, to our learned friend here for not having paid my addresses to you earlier. You must have thought me negligent?

NIKE.

Oh! Dionysus, I assure you it is not so. Your temperament is one of violent extremes—you are either sparkling with miraculous rapidity of apprehension, or you are sunken in a heavy doze. These have doubtless been some of your sleepy days. And I ... oh! I am very deeply changed.

DIONYSUS.

No, not at all. Hardly at all. [He scarcely glances at her, but turns to AESCULAPIUS.] But farewell to both of you, for I am going down to the sea-board to watch for dolphins. That long melancholy plunge of the black snout thrills me with pleasure. It always did, and the coast-line here curiously reminds me of Naxos. Be kind to Aesculapius, Nike.

[He descends along the water-course, and exit. NIKE smiles sadly, and half holds out her arms towards AESCULAPIUS.]

NIKE.

It is for you, O brother of Hermes, to be kind to me. How altered we all are! Dionysus is not himself.... As I came here, I passed below the little grey precipice of limestone——

AESCULAPIUS.

Where the marchantias grow? Yes?

NIKE.

And three girls in white dresses, with wreaths of flowers on their shoulders, were laughing and chatting there in the shade of the great yew-tree. Who do you suppose they were, these laughing girls in white?

AESCULAPIUS.

Perhaps three of the Oceanides, bright as the pure foam of the wave?

NIKE.

Aesculapius, they were not girls. They were the terrible and ancient Eumenides, black with the curdled blood of Uranus. They were the inexorable Furies, who were wont to fawn about my feet, with the adders quivering in their tresses, tormenting me for the spoils of victory. What does it mean? Why are they in white? As we came hither in the dreadful vessel, they were huddled together at the prow, and their long black raiment hung overboard and touched the brine. They were mumbling and crooning hate-songs, and pointing with skinny fingers to the portents in the sky. What is it that has changed their mood? What is it that can have turned the robes of the Eumenides white, and enamelled their wrinkled flesh with youth?

AESCULAPIUS.

Is it not because a like strange metamorphosis has invaded your own nature that you have come to meet me here?

NIKE [after a pause].

I am bewildered, but I am not unhappy. I come because the secrets of life are known to you. I come because it was you whom Zeus sent to watch over Cadmus and Harmonia when their dread and comfortable change came over them. They were weary with grief and defeat, tired of being for ever overwhelmed by the ever-mounting wave of mortal fate. I am weary——

AESCULAPIUS [slowly].

Of what, Nike? Be true to yourself. Of what are you weary?

NIKE.

I come to you that you may tell. I know no better than the snake knows when his skin withers and bloats. I feel distress, apprehension, no pain, a little fear.

AESCULAPIUS.

You speak of Cadmus and Harmonia; but is not your case the opposite of theirs? They were saved from defeat; is it not your unspoken hope to be saved from victory, saved from what was your essential self?

NIKE.

Can it be so? I find, it is true, that I look back upon my rush and blaze of battle with no real regret. What a vain thing it was, the perpetual clash and resonance of a victory that no one could withstand; the mockery that conquest must be to an immortal whom no one can ever really oppose;—no veritable difficulty to overcome, no genuine resistance to meet, nothing positively tussled with and thrown, nothing but ghostly armies shrinking and melting a little way in front of my advancing eagles! That can never happen again, and even through the pang of losing my laurel and my wings, I did not genuinely deplore it. Nothing but the sheer intoxication of my immortality had kept me at the pitch. And now that it is gone, oh wisest of the gods, it is for you to tell me how, in this mortal state, I can remain happy and yet be me.

AESCULAPIUS.

You are on the high road to happiness; you see its towers over the dust, for you dare to know yourself.

NIKE.

Myself, Aesculapius?

AESCULAPIUS.

Yes; you have that signal, that culminating courage.

NIKE.

But it is because I do not know my way that I come to you.

AESCULAPIUS.

To recognise the way is one thing, it is much; but to recognise yourself is infinitely more, and includes the way.

NIKE.

Ah! I see. I think I partly see. The element of real victory was absent where no defeat could be.

AESCULAPIUS [eagerly].

Dismal, sooty, raven-coloured robes of the Eumenides!

NIKE.

And it may be present even where no final conquest can ensue?

AESCULAPIUS.

Ah! how white they grow! How the serpents drop out of their tresses.

NIKE.

I am feeling forward with my finger-tips, like a blind woman searching.... And the real splendour of victory may consist in the helpless mortal state; may blossom there, while it only budded in our immortality?

AESCULAPIUS.

May consist, really, of the effort, the desire, the act of gathering up the will to make the plunge. This will be victory now, it will be the drawing of the bow-string and not the mere cessation of the arrow-flight.



XII

[The main terrace, soon after dawn. In the centre ZEUS sits alone, throned and silent. One by one the Gods come out of the house, and arrange themselves in a semicircle, to the left and right, each as he passes making obeisance to ZEUS. It is a perfectly still morning, and a dense white mist hangs over the woods, completely hiding the sea and the farther shore. When all are seated.]

ZEUS [in a very slow voice].

My children, since we came here I have not been visited until to-night by even a shadow of those forebodings which, in the form of divine prescience, illuminated my plans and your fortunes in Olympus. [A pause, while the gods lean towards him in deepest attention.] But a dream came close to my pillow last night and whispered to me strange, disquieting words.... I have no longer the art of clairvoyance, but I find I am not wholly dark. Still can I faintly divine the forms of the future, as we may all divine the roll of the woods before us, and the cleft which leads down to the shore, although this impalpable vapour shrouds our world.... And, from the dream, or from my faint perceptions, I am made aware that another mighty change is approaching us.

[A silence.]

HERACLES.

Can you indicate to us the nature of this change? [Looking round the semicircle.] If it is permitted to us to do so we would repudiate it. [The gods in silence signify their assent.]

ZEUS [not replying to HERACLES].

When we fled hither from the consuming malignity of the traitor, it was communicated to me that this island on the very uttermost border of the world was left us as a home from which we should never be dislodged. Here we were to dwell in peace, and here ... to grow old, and ... die. Here, in the meantime, new interests, humble wishes, cheerful curiosities have already twined about us, and we have gazed upon Pandora's jewel, and are no more the same.

PERSEPHONE.

Are we to be driven hence still farther towards the confines of immensity, father?

ZEUS.

I know not.

KRONOS.

More journeys, more weary, weary journeys?

ZEUS.

I know but what I tell you ... that I foresee a change. [A silence.] How breathless is the air. Not the outline of a leaf is shaken against the sky.

PHOEBUS.

But the mist grows thinner, and high up in it I see a faint blueness.

ZEUS.

I do not—nothing but the bewildering woolly whiteness, that chills my eyeballs.... [With a sudden vivacity.] Ah! yes ... it is the sea! Is Poseidon here?

POSEIDON.

I went down to the shore very early indeed this morning, before there was an atom of mist in the air. I called upon the glassy, oily sea, and I could not but fancy that, although there was little motion in the wave, it did roll faintly to my foot, and fawn at me in its reply. To me also, father, it seemed as though my element was burdened with a secret which it knew not how to convey to me.

[A silence.]

APHRODITE [aside to PALLAS].

If we must be driven forth again, let us at least cling to such new gifts as we have secured here.

PALLAS [in an eager whisper].

I should like to know what you consider them to be. Do you hold introspection as one of them?

APHRODITE.

I certainly do. The analysis of one's own feelings, and the sense of watching the fluctuating symptoms of one's individuality, form one of the principal consolations of our mortal state.

PALLAS.

I think I should give it another name.

HERMES [who has come up behind them, and bending forward has overheard the conversation].

My name for it would be the indulgence of personal vanity.

APHRODITE [speaks louder, while the conversation becomes general, except that ZEUS takes no part in it].

You may call it so, if you please, but it is a source of genuine pleasure to us.

PHOEBUS.

Ignorance is doubtless another of these consolations—ignorance chemically modified by a few drops of the desire for knowledge.... [Enthusiastically.] And all the chastened forms of recollection, how delightful they are, and how they add to our satisfaction here!

NIKE.

It would be interesting to me to understand what you mean by chastened forms of recollection. I don't think that is my experience.

PALLAS.

I conceive memory as a pure, unbiased emotion, an image of past life cast upon an unflawed mirror. Why do you say "chastened"?

PHOEBUS.

That memory which is nothing but a plain reproduction on the mirror of the mind is a tame concern, Pallas. It transfers, without modification, all that is dull, and squalid, and unessential. The only memory which is worthy of those who have tasted immortality is that which has in some degree been fortified. To recollect with enjoyment is to select certain salient facts from an experience and to be oblivious of the rest; or else it is to heighten the exciting elements of an event out of all proportion with historic fact; or it even is to place what should be in the seat of what precisely was.... But this must be done firmly, logically, with no timidity in reminiscence, so that the mind shall rest in a perfectly artistic conviction that what it recollects is all the truth and nothing but the truth. This is chastened, or, if you prefer it, civilised memory. But Zeus is about to speak.

[The Gods resume their seats in silence. ZEUS rises from his throne, and the Gods perceive that the mist has now almost entirely evaporated around them, and that the entire scene is luminous with morning radiance. All the Gods lean forward to gaze on ZEUS, who gazes over and beyond them to the sea.]

ZEUS.

The whole bay heaves in one vast wave of unbroken pearl.... And in the east something flashes ... something moves ... approaches.

[All the Gods, except KRONOS and RHEA, rise and follow with their gaze the extended hand of ZEUS. POSEIDON steps forward to the front of the scene and shouts.]

POSEIDON.

See! Three huge white ships are coming out of the east, and the waves glide away at their wake in widening glassy hues. How they speed! How they speed, without oar or sail!

KRONOS.

No rest, no sleep for us. Leave us here behind you, Zeus. We never have any rest.

RHEA.

Yes; do not drag us farther in the wearisome train of your misfortunes.

ZEUS [benignly, turning to them.]

Be not afraid, Rhea and Kronos. But we must not abandon you. For the old sakes' sake we will hold together to the end.

ARES.

Shall we not collect our forces in unison, mortal as they are, and die together in resisting this invasion?

DIONYSUS.

The kind barbarians are with us. They will fight at our side.

HEPHAESTUS.

Yes, let us fight and die.

ZEUS.

You have no forces to collect, my sons. We cannot take toll of the blood of the barbarians. We cannot resist, we can but submit and withdraw.... The ships fleet closer. They are like monstrous fishes of living silver. I confess this is not what I anticipated. This is not what my faint dream seemed to indicate. What inspires the implacable destroyer to pursue us, and with this imposing and miraculous navy, to the shore of that harmless exile in which we were endeavouring to forget his existence, I know not. But let us at least preserve that dignity which has survived our deity. Whatever may be now in store for us—if the worst of all things be now hurrying to complete our annihilation—let us meet it with simplicity. Let us meet it with an even mind.

CIRCE.

Oh, see! what are those filaments of blue and violet and grassy green which flutter in the cordage of the three ships?

PHOEBUS.

They leap forward, though no wind is blowing.

CIRCE.

They are arranged in order, and they bend upwards and now outwards.

HERA.

The colours of them are those which adorn my bird.

PALLAS.

Ah! wonder of wonders! These have joined one another, see, and now they shoot forward together in a vibrating ribband of delicious lustre, and now it is arched to our shore, and descends at the lowest of these our woodland stairs.

ZEUS.

A vast rainbow from the three white vessels to this island!... And behold, a figure steps from it. She is robed to the feet in palest watchet blue, and her face is like a rosy star, and she waves her violet wings in the incommunicable speed of her ascent. My children, it is Iris, our lost daughter, our ineffable messenger. Let us await in silence the tidings which she brings.

[ZEUS seats himself, and the Gods take their places as before. The air is now translucent, the sky cloudless, while the beechwoods flash with the lustre of dew, and the sea beyond the white ships is like a floor of turquoise. IRIS is seen to rise from the shore, through the gorge in the woods. She approaches, half flying, half climbing, with incredible velocity. She appears, in her splendour, at the top of the stairs, and looks round upon the Gods. Without exception, in the magnificence of her presence they look grey and old and dim. She hesitates a moment, and then kneels before the throne of ZEUS.]

IRIS.

Father and lawgiver! Imperial Master of Heaven! The rebellion in Olympus is over. The usurper has fallen under the weight of his own presumption, lower than the lowest chasms of Hades, chained for all eternity by the fetters of his own insolence and madness. It is not needful for you, Zeus, to punish or to be clement. Under the inevitable rebound of his impious frenzy, himself has sealed his doom for ever and ever. It is now for the Father of Heaven, and these his children, to resume their immortality and to regain their incomparable abodes. Be it my reward for the joyous labour of bringing the good news, to be the first to kiss these awful and eternal feet.

[IRIS flings herself before ZEUS in adoration, and folds her wings about her face. As she touches him, his deity blazes forth from him. When IRIS rises again, she glances round at the Gods with gratified astonishment, for all of them have become brilliant and young.]

ZEUS.

Lead the way, Iris. This is no longer a place for us. Lead on and we will follow. Lead on, that we may resume our immortality.

[IRIS flies down to the sea, and ZEUS descends the steps. He is followed by all the other deities.]

CIRCE.

Were we really happy among these trees? I can scarcely credit it, they seem so common and so frail.

NIKE.

Ha, my palm and my laurel and my wings. How can I have breathed without them for an hour?

APHRODITE [to EROS].

Shall we recollect this little episode when we walk up the golden street presently to our houses?

EROS.

I cannot think so, mother. That refinement of memory of which Phoebus was speaking will seem the most ridiculous of illusions there.

PHOEBUS.

Yes; to cultivate illusion, to live in the past, to resuscitate experience, may be the amusements of mortality, but they mean nothing now to us. When Selene re-enters her orb, she will not disquiet herself about the disorders of its interregnum.

PALLAS [hastily reascending].

I have left Pandora's jewel behind me. I must fetch it.

HERMES [the last to descend].

Let me confess that I took it from you. One of the barbarians was weeping, and I wished, I cannot tell why, to see her smile. I gave your jewel to her.

PALLAS.

It is of no moment. It would be an inconspicuous ornament in that blaze of the heart's beauty to which the white ships are about to carry us.

HERMES.

Come, then, Pallas, and let us linger here no more.

[They descend and disappear.]



THE END.



Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh



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Transcriber's Note

Variant spellings in this ebook have been retained to match the original document.

The use of an ae-ligature in the name 'Hephaestus' has been regularized. The oe-ligature is represented by 'oe' in the text version of this ebook, and retains the oe-ligature in the HTML version. Ellipses have been regularized.

The original text contained duplicate headers for Acts; these duplications have been omitted in this ebook.

The following typographical corrections were made to this text:

Page 16: Added missing period (EROS.)

Page 16: Changed em-dash to long dash to match style of text

Page 16: Changed casket to caskets (all the empty caskets)

Page 28: Added missing comma (he answered, "Pray don't)

Page 101: Changed 'o' to 'of' (It is kind of)

Page 132: Added missing period (CHLORIS.)

Page 140: Changed 'o' to 'of' (degradation, instead of)

THE END