Zopyrus moistened his lips and he cleared his throat so that his voice would be audible.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked scarcely above a whisper.
The girl laughed coyly and toyed for a moment with her piece of fancy-work while Zopyrus advanced toward her a step. Then she raised her blue eyes in whose depths Zopyrus read the same love-message that he had at Salamis and at the Mysteries.
“I am exactly who I appear to be,” she said. “I am Persephone of Eleusis. This is my home and—”
Zopyrus, eyes bright with the unnatural luster of a fever, echoed her words as she finished: “Aeschylus is my father.”
She threw back her head and tossed her curls and before she realized what was about to happen, Zopyrus held her in his arms, kissing her again and again the while he murmured: “I love you Persephone, but I am a Persian and must return to the encampment at Phalerum. Salamis is saved—listen to the Hymn to Dionysus! Can you find your way in safety to your people?—Hear the chant—”
Persephone felt his hold upon her relax, and though she tried to keep him from falling, he slipped from her grasp and sank unconscious to the floor.
“Euphorion! Euphorion!” screamed the terrified girl. “He is ill! Call Lycambes and together you must carry him to father’s chamber and there make him comfortable till I can summon a physician.”
His exposure to the storm, and the shock of finding Persephone and learning her identity, had proved too much for Zopyrus in his state of mental depression and low ebb of vitality due to the Naxian tragedy. For days he lay upon the couch of Aeschylus alternating between chills and raging fever. In his delirium he raved, and his listeners wondered at the names of Persephone and Eumetis heard interchangeably to fall from his lips. Pasicles, Cleodice and Eumetis were frequent visitors till the crisis was past and Zopyrus was a convalescent.
Upon one occasion a few days before Zopyrus expected to be able to undertake the journey back to Athens, he and Persephone were seated in the garden. The statues of Ceres and Iambe stood in their accustomed places, but the Hades and Persephone had disappeared. Zopyrus asked no question for he felt that Persephone was fully justified in her dislike for that particular work of art, beautiful though it was.