You never can be a mortal like the barbarians, for you have been a force ruling the sea, and the flowers, and the winds, and twisting the blood of man and woman in your fingers like a living skein of soft red silk. They will always worship you. It may not be in temples any longer, not with a studied liturgy, but wherever the sap rises in a flower, or the joy of life swims up in the morning through the broken film of dreams, or a young man perceives for the first time that the girl he meets is comely, you will be worshipped, Aphrodite, for the essence of your immortality is the cumulative glow of its recurrent mortality.
Hermes [entering abruptly].
You will be disappointed——
Circe.
Ah! you followed the youths and maidens
to the little temple of our friend. Is it not beautiful?
Hermes.
It is hideous.
Circe.
Are you sure that it is a temple at all?