age to
Ionia, and was returning to her to bring peace to her heart? But the
sea-beach was strewn with wrack and the winds still blew bits of
tattered surf along the shore, and for her there was only the heavy
labour of waiting, of waiting and of watching for the ship that never
came. The incense from her altars blew out, in heavy sweetness, to
meet the bitter-sweet tang of the seaweed that was carried in by the
tide, for Halcyone prayed on, fearful, yet hoping that her prayers
might still keep safe her man--her king--her lover. She busied herself
in laying out the garments he would wear on his return, and in
choosing the clothes in which she might be fairest in his eyes. This
robe, as blue as the sky in spring--silver-bordered, as the sea in
kind mood is bordered with a feathery silver fringe. She could recall
just how Ceyx looked when first he saw her wear it. She could hear his
very tones as he told her that of all queens she was the peeress, of
all women the most beautiful, of all wives the most dear. Almost she
forgot the horrors of the night, so certain did it seem that his dear
voice must soon again tell her the words that have been love's litany
since ever time began.

In the ears of Juno those petitions for him whose dead body was even
then being tossed hither and thither by the restless waves, his
murderers, came at last to be more than even she could bear. She gave
command to her handmaiden Iris to go to the palace of Somnus, god of
Sleep and brother of Death, and to bid him send to Halcyone a vision,
in the form of Ceyx, to tell her that all her weary waiting was in
vain.

In a valley among the black Cimmerian mountains the death-god Somnus
had his abode. In her rainbow-hued robes, Iris darted through the sky
at her mistress's bidding, tingeing, as she sped through them, the
clouds that she passed. It was a silent valley that she reached at
last. Here the sun never came, nor was there ever any sound to break
the silence. From the ground the noiseless grey clouds, whose work it
is to hide the sun and moon, rose softly and rolled away up to the
mountain tops and down to the lowest valleys, to work the will of the
gods. All around the cave lurked the long dark shadows that bring fear
to the heart of children, and that, at nightfall, hasten the steps of
the timid wayfarer. No noise was there, but from far down the valley
there came a murmur so faint and so infinitely soothing that it was
less a sound than of a