half in
a dream. Yet he hid himself cunningly in the shadow of a long avenue
of myrtles, for he guessed that sea-robbers were keeping revel in
the forsaken shrine. But he heard no sound of singing and no tread of
dancing feet within the fane of the Goddess of Love; the sacred plot
of the goddess and her chapels were silent. He hearkened awhile, and
watched, till at last he took courage, drew near the doors, and entered
the holy place. But in the tall, bronze braziers there were no faggots
burning, nor were there torches lighted in the hands of the golden men
and maids, the images that stand within the fane of Aphrodite. Yet, if
he did not dream, nor take moonlight for fire, the temple was bathed in
showers of gold by a splendour of flame. None might see its centre nor
its fountain; it sprang neither from the altar nor the statue of the
goddess, but was everywhere imminent, a glory not of this world, a fire
untended and unlit. And the painted walls with the stories of the loves
of men and gods, and the carven pillars and the beams, and the roof of
green, were bright with flaming fire!

At this the Wanderer was afraid, knowing that an immortal was at hand;
for the comings and goings of the gods were attended, as he had seen,
by this wonderful light of unearthly fire. So he bowed his head, and hid
his face as he sat by the altar in the holiest of the holy shrine, and
with his right hand he grasped the horns of the altar. As he sat there,
perchance he woke, and perchance he slept. However it was, it seemed
to him that soon there came a murmuring and a whispering of the myrtle
leaves and laurels, and a sound in the tops of the pines, and then his
face was fanned by a breath more cold than the wind that wakes the dawn.
At the touch of this breath the Wanderer shuddered, and the hair on his
flesh stood up, so cold was the strange wind.

There was silence; and he heard a voice, and he knew that it was the
voice of no mortal, but of a goddess. For the speech of goddesses was
not strange in his ears; he knew the clarion cry of Athene, the Queen of
Wisdom and of War; and the winning words of Circe, the Daughter of the
Sun, and the sweet song of Calypso's voice as she wove with her golden
shuttle at the loom. But now the words came sweeter than the moaning of
doves, more soft than sleep. So came the golden voice, whether he woke
or whether he dreamed.

"Odysseus, thou knowest me not, nor am I thy lady, nor hast thou ever
been m