d before any scaly horror, you never spared a truculent
robber or a noisome beast, nor avoided a laborious act----

HERACLES.

These might be quoted, I should have thought, as instances of my
consistency.

EROS.

Yes, but then (you must really forgive me) your weakness in the
matter of Omphale did seem, to those who knew you not, like want
of self-respect. I have the reputation of shrinking, in the pursuit
of pleasure, from no fantastic disguise, but I never sat spinning
in the garments of a servant-maid. You must have looked a strange
daughter of the plough, Heracles. I blush for you to think of it.

HERACLES.

It was odd, certainly. Yet if _you_ cannot comprehend it, Eros, I
despair of explaining it to anybody. I should never do it again.
You must admit I showed no want of firmness afterwards in dealing
with Hebe, but then, she never interested me. Is she here? But do
not reply, I am not anxious to learn.

EROS.

Your dejection passes beyond all bounds. You cannot have been
shown the singularly cheerful little jewel which Pallas has brought
with her? It raises every one's spirits.

HERACLES.

It will not raise mine; for all of you, Eros, have been immortals
from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour
on the moral palate. But the taste of it was known of old to me,
and I am not its dupe. It simply carries me back to the ancient
weary round of ceaseless struggle, unending battle, incessant
renascence of the sprouting heads of Hydra; to all that from which
the windless Olympus was a refuge. Hope is presented--to one who
has tasted it and who knows that it is futile--without reawakening,
under such new conditions as we have here, any zest of adventure.
The jewel of Pandora may be exhilarating to fallen immortality;
it has no lustre whatever for a backsliding mortal.

[_Sounds of laughter are heard, and steps ascending from the
shore._]

EROS [_to_ HERACLES].

Draw your lion's skin about you less negligently, Heracles; I hear
visitants approaching. You are not in the woodways of OEta.

[_The_ OCEANIDES _rush in from the lower woodlands. They are
carrying torches, and arrive in a condition of the highest
exhilaration._ EROS _proceeds a step or two to meet them, with
a smile and a mock reverence_. HERACLES, _brooding over his
knees, does not even raise his eyes at their clamorous entry_.]

EROS.

Are you proceeding to set our Fath