best to comfort them. People would die, too, while Leo was
talking and singing and laughing; for the Archer and the Scorpion and
the Crab and the other Houses were as busy as ever. Sometimes the
crowd broke, and were frightened, and Leo strove to keep them steady
by telling them that this was cowardly; and sometimes they mocked at
the Houses that were killing them, and Leo explained that this was
even more cowardly than running away.

In their wanderings they came across the Bull, or the Ram, or the
Twins, but all were too busy to do more than nod to each other across
the crowd, and go on with their work. As the years rolled on even that
recognition ceased, for the Children of the Zodiac had forgotten that
they had ever been Gods working for the sake of men. The star
Aldebaran was crusted with caked dirt on the Bull's forehead, the
Ram's fleece was dusty and torn, and the Twins were only babies
fighting over the cat on the door-step. It was then that Leo said,
"Let us stop singing and making jokes." And it was then that the Girl
said, "No." But she did not know why she said "No" so energetically.
Leo maintained that it was perversity, till she herself, at the end of
a dusty day, made the same suggestion to him, and he said, "Most
certainly not!" and they quarrelled miserably between the hedgerows,
forgetting the meaning of the stars above them. Other singers and
other talkers sprang up in the course of the years, and Leo,
forgetting that there could never be too many of these, hated them for
dividing the applause of the children of men, which he thought should
be all his own. The Girl would grow angry too, and then the songs
would be broken, and the jests fall flat for weeks to come, and the
children of men would shout: "Go home, you two gipsies. Go home and
learn something worth singing!"

After one of these sorrowful, shameful days, the Girl, walking by
Leo's side through the fields, saw the full moon coming up over the
trees, and she clutched Leo's arm, crying: "The time has come now. Oh,
Leo, forgive me!"

"What is it?" said Leo. He was thinking of the other singers.

"My husband!" she answered, and she laid his hand upon her breast, and
the breast that he knew so well was hard as stone. Leo groaned,
remembering what the Crab had said.

"Surely we were Gods once," he cried.

"Surely we are Gods still," said the Girl. "Do you not remember when
you and I went to the House of the Crab and--were not very much
af