ed glances with Aphrodite,
who was also in the box, and continued,--

"Allow me, before the games begin, to read my epithalamium--"

"No, no, brother," interrupted the giant, hastily. "Better, far better
not! The verses are--"

"Perhaps not smooth enough? What do you know about hiatus, and--"

"Nothing at all! But the sense--so far as I understood it--you were
good enough to read it aloud to me three times--"

"Five times to me," said Aphrodite, softly, with a charming smile. "I
entreated him to burn the verses. They are neither beautiful nor good.
So what is their use?"

"The meaning is so exaggerated," Thrasaric went on; "well, we may say
shameless."

"They follow the best Roman models," said the poet, resentfully.

"Very probably. Perhaps that is the reason I was ashamed when I
listened to them alone; I should not like, in the presence of these
ladies--"

A shrill laugh reached his ears.

"You are laughing, Astarte?"

"Yes, handsome Thrasaric, I am laughing! You Germans are incorrigible
shamefaced boys, with the limbs of giants."

The bride raised her eyes beseechingly to him. He did not see it.

"Shamefaced? I have seemed to myself very shameless. My part as a
half-nude god is most distasteful to me. I shall be glad, Eugenia, when
all this uproar is over."

She pressed his hand gratefully, whispering, "And to-morrow you will go
with me to Hilda, won't you? She wished to congratulate me on the first
day of my happiness."

"Certainly! And _her_ congratulations will bring you happiness. She is
the most glorious of women. She, her marriage with Gibamund, first
taught me to believe once more in women, love, and the happiness of
wedded life. It was she who--What do you want, little man? Oh, the
games! The guests! I was forgetting everything. Go on! Give the signal!
They must begin below."

Mercury stepped forward to the white marble railing of the box and
waved his serpent wand twice in the air. The two gates at the right and
left of the stables swung open: from the former a man, clad in blue,
carrying a tuba, entered the arena; from the latter one dressed
entirely in green; and two loud blasts announced the entrance of the
circensian procession. In the brief pause before the appearance of the
chariots Modigisel plucked the bridegroom lightly by his panther-skin.

"Listen," he whispered, "my Astarte is fairly devouring you with her
eyes. I believe she likes you far better than she does me. I suppose