He babbled on for a while, defiantly and incoherently, and at length she turned in dumb rebuke, which he at once understood.
"True, lady, I am tolerably drunk";
for it was the triumph-night, and merriment had reigned at the banquet, reigned and increased
"'Till something happened' . . .
Here he strangely paused";
but soon went on to tell the way in which the news had reached them there. . . . While Aristophanes spoke, Balaustion searched his face; and now (recalling, on the way to Rhodes, that hour to Euthukles), she likens the change which she then saw in it to that made by a black cloud suddenly sailing over a stretch of sparkling sea—such a change as they are in this very moment beholding.
"Just so, some overshadow, some new care
Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face,
And left there only such a dark surmise—
No wonder if the revel disappeared,
So did his face shed silence every side!
I recognised a new man fronting me."
At once he perceived her insight, and answered it: "So you see myself? Your fixed regard can strip me of my 'accidents,' as the sophists say?" But neither should this disconcert him:
"Thank your eyes' searching; undisguised I stand:
The merest female child may question me.
Spare not, speak bold, Balaustion!"
She, searching thus his face, had learnt already that "what she had disbelieved most proved most true." Drunk though he was,