ad faith therein to, full-face, fling the same--
Sudden, the ice-thaw! The assembled foe,
Heaving and swaying with strange friendliness,
Cried 'Reverence Elektra!'--cried
. . . 'Let stand
Athenai'! . . ."

--and Athens was saved through Euripides,

"Through Euthukles, through--more than ever--me,
Balaustion, me, who, Wild-Pomegranate-Flower,
Felt my fruit triumph, and fade proudly so!"

* * * * *

But next day, Sparta woke from the spell. Harsh Lysander decreed that
though Athens might be saved, the Piraeus should not. Comedy should
destroy the Long Walls: the flute-girls should lead off in the dance,
should time the strokes of spade and pickaxe, till the pride of the
Violet-Crowned lay in the dust. "Done that day!" mourns Balaustion:

"The very day Euripides was born."

But _they_ would not see the passing of Athenai; they would go, fleeing
the sights and sounds,

"And press to other earth, new heaven, by sea
That somehow ever prompts to 'scape despair"

--and wonderfully, at the harbour-side they found that old grey mariner,
whose ship she had saved in the first Adventure! The ship was still
weather-wise: it should

"'Convey Balaustion back to Rhodes, for sake
Of her and her Euripides!' laughed he,"

--and they embarked. It should be Rhodes indeed: to Rhodes they now are
sailing.

Euripides lies buried in the little valley "laughed and moaned about by
streams,"

"Boiling and freezing, like the love and hate
Which helped or harmed him through his earthly course.
They mix in Arethusa by his grave."

But, just as she had known, this revocation _has_ consoled her. Now she
will be able to forget. Never again will her eyes behold Athenai, nor in
imagination see "the ghastly mirth that mocked her overthrow"; but she
and Euthukles are exiles from the dead, not from the living, Athens:

"That's in the cloud there, with the new-born star!"

There is no despair, there can be none; for does not the soul anticipate
its heaven here on earth:

"Above all crowding, crystal silentness,
Above all noise, a silver solitude . . .
Hatred and cark and care, what place have they
In yon blue liberality of heaven?
How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise
Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!"

They are entering Rhodes now