th rage
and with bitter shame, he cried aloud: "Thou, Epaphos, art the liar. I
have but to ask my father, and thou shalt see me drive his golden
chariot across the sky."

To his mother he hastened, to get balm for his hurt pride, as many a
time he had got it for the little bodily wounds of childhood, and with
bursting heart he poured forth his story.

"True it is," he said, "that my father has never deigned to speak to
me. Yet I know, because thou hast told me so, that he is my sire. And
now my word is pledged. Apollo must let me drive his steeds, else I am
for evermore branded braggart and liar, and shamed amongst men."

Clymene listened with grief to his complaint. He was so young, so
gallant, so foolish.

"Truly thou art the son of Apollo," she said, "and oh, son of my
heart, thy beauty is his, and thy pride the pride of a son of the
gods. Yet only partly a god art thou, and though thy proud courage
would dare all things, it were mad folly to think of doing what a god
alone can do."

But at last she said to him, "Naught that I can say is of any avail.
Go, seek thy father, and ask him what thou wilt." Then she told him
how he might find the place in the east where Apollo rested ere the
labours of the day began, and with eager gladness Phaeton set out upon
his journey. A long way he travelled, with never a stop, yet when the
glittering dome and jewelled turrets and minarets of the Palace of the
Sun came into view, he forgot his weariness and hastened up the steep
ascent to the home of his father.

Phoebus Apollo, clad in purple that glowed like the radiance of a
cloud in the sunset sky, sat upon his golden throne. The Day, the
Month, and the Year stood by him, and beside them were the Hours.
Spring was there, her head wreathed with flowers; Summer, crowned with
ripened grain; Autumn, with his feet empurpled by the juice of the
grapes; and Winter, with hair all white and stiff with hoar-frost. And
when Phaeton walked up the golden steps that led to his father's
throne, it seemed as though incarnate Youth had come to join the court
of the god of the Sun, and that Youth was so beautiful a thing that it
must surely live forever. Proudly did Apollo know him for his son, and
when the boy looked in his eyes with the arrogant fearlessness of
boyhood, the god greeted him kindly and asked him to tell him why he
came, and what was his petition.

As to Clymene, so also to Apollo, Phaeton told his tale, and his
father lis