ave higher or lower.
Also multitude of spinners is token of much
rain."

Bartholomew.

The sun has not long enough shown his face to dry up the dew in the
garden, and behold on the little clipped tree of boxwood, a great
marvel! For in and out, and all over its twigs and leaves, Arachne has
woven her web, and on the web the dew has dropped a million diamond
drops. And, suddenly, all the colours in the sky are mirrored
dazzlingly on the grey tapestry of her making. Arachne has come to her
own again.

IDAS AND MARPESSA

By day, while the sun-god drove his chariot in the high heavens and
turned the blue-green AEgean Sea into the semblance of a blazing shield
of brass, Idas and Marpessa sat together in the trees' soft shades, or
walked in shadowy valleys where violets and wild parsley grew, and
where Apollo rarely deigned to come. At eventide, when, in royal
splendour of purple and crimson and gold, Apollo sought his rest in
the western sky, Idas and Marpessa wandered by the seashore watching
the little wavelets softly kissing the pebbles on the beach, or
climbed to the mountain side from whence they could see the first
glimpse of Diana's silver crescent and the twinkling lights of the
Pleiades breaking through the blue canopy of the sky. While Apollo
sought in heaven and on earth the best means to gratify his imperial
whims, Idas, for whom all joys had come to mean but one, sought ever
to be by the side of Marpessa. Shadowy valley, murmuring sea, lonely
mountain side, or garden where grew the purple amaranth and where
roses of pink and amber-yellow and deepest crimson dropped their
radiant petals on the snowy marble paths, all were the same to
Idas--Paradise for him, were Marpessa by his side; without her, dreary
desert.

More beautiful than any flower that grew in the garden was Marpessa.
No music that Apollo's lute could make was as sweet in the ears of
Idas as her dear voice. Its music was ever new to him--a melody to
make his heart more quickly throb. New, too, ever was her beauty. For
him it was always the first time that they met, always the same fresh
ravishment to look in her eyes. And when to Idas came the knowledge
that Marpessa gave him love for love, he had indeed won happiness so
great as to draw upon him the envy of the gods.

"The course of true love never did run smooth," and, like many and
many another father since his day, Evenos, the father of Marpessa, was
bitterly oppo