NGER.--I can hardly help myself, but, for all that, I will be as
careful as I can.

PRAXINOE.--How close-packed the mob is, they hustle like a herd of
swine!

STRANGER.--Courage, lady; all is well with us now.

PRAXINOE.--Both this year and forever may all be well with you, my dear
sir, for your care of us. A good, kind man! We're letting Eunoe get
squeezed--come, wretched girl, push your way through. That is the way.
We are all on the right side of the door, quoth the bridegroom, when he
had shut himself in with his bride.

GORGO.--Do come here, Praxinoe. Look first at these embroideries. How
light and how lovely! You will call them the garments of the gods.

PRAXINOE.--Lady Athena! what spinning women wrought them, what painters
designed those drawings, so true they are? How naturally they stand and
move, like living creatures, not patterns woven! What a clever thing is
man! Ah, and himself--Adonis--how beautiful to behold he lies on his
silver couch, with the first down on his cheeks, the thrice-beloved
Adonis,--Adonis beloved even among the dead!

A STRANGER.--You weariful women, do cease your endless cooing talk! They
bore one to death with their eternal broad vowels!

GORGO.--Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to you
if we _are_ chatterboxes! Give orders to your own servants, sir. Do you
pretend to command ladies of Syracuse? If you must know, we are
Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak
Peloponnesian. Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume?

PRAXINOE.--Lady Persephone!--never may we have more than one master! I
am not afraid of _your_ putting me on short commons.

GORGO.--Hush, hush, Praxinoe! the Argive woman's daughter, the great
singer, is beginning the _Adonis_; she that won the prize last year for
dirge singing. I am sure she will give us something lovely; see, she is
preluding with her airs and graces.

* * * * *

THE PSALM OF ADONIS

O Queen that lovest Golgi, and Idalium, and the steep of Eryx, O
Aphrodite, that playest with gold, Io, from the stream eternal of
Acheron they have brought back to thee Adonis--even in the twelfth month
they have brought him, the dainty-footed Hours. Tardiest of the
Immortals are the beloved Hours, but dear and desired they come, for
always, to all mortals, they bring some gift with them. O Cypris,
daughter of Dione, from mortal to immortal, so men tell, thou hast
changed Ber