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 Œta.
[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.]