, found Hermes knew where. By a rush-candle's
flicker Sicinnus applied the dark dye with a practised hand.

"You know the art well," observed the outlaw.

"Assuredly; the agent of Themistocles must be a Proteus with his
disguises."

Sicinnus laid down his pot and brushes. They had no mirror, but Glaucon
knew that he was transformed. The host got his daric. Again they went out
into the night and forsaking the crowded town sought the seaside. The
strand was broad, the sand soft and cool, the circling stars gave three
hours yet of night, and they lay down to rest. The sea and the shore
stretched away, a magic vista with a thousand mystic shapes springing out
of the charmed darkness, made and unmade as overwrought fancy summoned
them. As from an unreal world Glaucon--whilst he lay--saw the lights of the
scattered ships, heard the clank of chains, the rattling of tacklings.
Nature slept. Only man was waking.

"The mountain brows, the rocks, the peaks are sleeping,
Uplands and gorges hush!
The thousand moorland things are silence keeping,
The beasts under each bush
Crouch, and the hived bees
Rest in their honeyed ease;
In the purple sea fish lie as they were dead,
And each bird folds his wing over his head."

The school-learned lines of Alcman, with a thousand other trivial things,
swarmed back through the head of Glaucon the Alcmaeonid. How much he had
lived through that night, how much he would live through,--if indeed he was
to live,--upon the morrow! The thought was benumbing in its greatness. His
head swam with confused memories. Then at last all things dimmed. Once
more he dreamed. He was with Hermione gathering red poppies on the hill
above Eleusis. She had filled her basket full. He called to her to wait
for him. She ran away. He chased, she fled with laughter and sparkling
eyes. He could hear the wavings of her dress, the little cries she flung
back over her shoulder. Then by the sacred well near the temple he caught
her. He felt her struggling gayly. He felt her warm breath upon his face,
her hair was touching his forehead. Rejoicing in his strength, he was
bending her head toward his--but here he wakened. Sicinnus had disappeared.
A bar of gray gold hung over the water in the east.

"This was the day. _This was the day!_"

Some moments he lay trying to realize the fact in its full moment. A thin
mist rested on the black water waiting to be dispelled by the su