He babbled on for a while, defiantly and incoherently, and at length she
turned in dumb rebuke, which he at once understood.

"True, lady, I am tolerably drunk";

for it was the triumph-night, and merriment had reigned at the banquet,
reigned and increased

"'Till something happened' . . .
Here he strangely paused";

but soon went on to tell the way in which the news had reached them
there. . . . While Aristophanes spoke, Balaustion searched his face; and
now (recalling, on the way to Rhodes, that hour to Euthukles), she
likens the change which she then saw in it to that made by a black cloud
suddenly sailing over a stretch of sparkling sea--such a change as they
are in this very moment beholding.

"Just so, some overshadow, some new care
Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face,
And left there only such a dark surmise--
No wonder if the revel disappeared,
So did his face shed silence every side!
I recognised a new man fronting me."

At once he perceived her insight, and answered it: "So you see myself?
Your fixed regard can strip me of my 'accidents,' as the sophists say?"
But neither should this disconcert him:

"Thank your eyes' searching; undisguised I stand:
The merest female child may question me.
Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!"

She, searching thus his face, had learnt already that "what she had
disbelieved most proved most true." Drunk though he was,

"There was a mind here, mind a-wantoning
At ease of undisputed mastery
Over the body's brood, those appetites.
Oh, but he grasped them grandly!"

It was no "ignoble presence": the broad bald brow, the flushed cheek,
great imperious fiery eyes, wide nostrils, full aggressive mouth, all
the pillared head:

"These made a glory, of such insolence--
I thought--such domineering deity . . .
Impudent and majestic . . ."

Instantly on her speaking face the involuntary homage had shown; and it
was to this that Aristophanes, keen of sight as she, had confidently
addressed himself when he told her to speak boldly. And in the very
spirit of her face she did speak:

"Bold speech be--welcome to this honoured hearth,
Good Genius!"

Here sounds the essential note of generous natures. Proved mistaken,
their instant impulse is to rejoice in defeat, if defeat means victory
for the better thing. Thus, as Balaustion speaks,