god might be supposed to be arousing himself from his afternoon's siesta.
She did not fear that his door would be closed against her, for he had no
door.

The sylvan deity stood, in fact, at the entrance of his cavern, about to
proceed in quest of his goats. The appearance of Iridion operated a change
in his intention, and he courteously escorted her to a seat of turf erected
for the special accommodation of his fair visitors, while he placed for
himself one of stone.

"Pan," she began, "I have broken my lily."

"That is a sad pity, child. If it had been a reed, now, you could have made
a flute of it."

"I should not have time, Pan," and she recounted her story. A godlike
nature cannot confound truth with falsehood, though it may mistake
falsehood for truth. Pan therefore never doubted Iridion's strange
narrative, and, having heard it to the end, observed, "You will find plenty
more lilies in Elysium."

"Common lilies, Pan; not like mine."

"You are wrong. The lilies of Elysium--asphodels as they call them
there--are as immortal as the Elysians themselves. I have seen them in
Proserpine's hair at Jupiter's entertainment; they were as fresh as she
was. There is no doubt you might gather them by handfuls--at least if you
had any hands--and wear them to your heart's content, if you had but a
heart."

"That's just what perplexes me, Pan. It is not the dying I mind, it's the
living. How am I to live without anything alive about me? If you take away
my hands, and my heart, and my brains, and my eyes, and my ears, and above
all my tongue, what is left me to live in Elysium?"

As the maiden spake a petal detached itself from the emaciated lily, and
she pressed her hand to her brow with a responsive cry of pain.

"Poor child!" said Pan compassionately, "you will feel no more pain
by-and-by."

"I suppose not, Pan, since you say so. But if I can feel no pain, how can I
feel any pleasure?

"In an incomprehensible manner," said Pan.

"How can I feel, if I have no feeling? and what am I to do without it?"

"You can think!" replied Pan. "Thinking (not that I am greatly given to it
myself) is a much finer thing than feeling; no right-minded person doubts
that. Feeling, as I have heard Minerva say, is a property of matter, and
matter, except, of course, that appertaining to myself and the other happy
gods, is vile and perishable--quite immaterial, in fact. Thought alone is
transcendent, incorruptible, and undying!"

"B