Then she said, “Lord and love, the night is over. The sun climbs the sky, the woodlands awake. But let us go into my scented chamber, my purple chamber where the day never comes. There will we lie in love and sleep and forget the day.”
She led him by the hand over the cool marble floor. The purple curtains fell behind them with a soft noise of falling. All sound was hushed in the courts of the palace, and the whole house was still.
THE THIRD EPISODE
How Ulysses walked in Hell, and of the Adventure of the Sirens and Scylla
The King of Ithaca stood all alone on a gloomy barren shore, spear in hand. The sky lowered black overhead, and from the vast yawning hole in the terrible cliff which rose up before him he seemed to hear strange wailings and faint cries coming, so it seemed, from a great distance.
Had he at last broken away from the loving arms of Circe for this horror? Stung once more by the latent manhood in his blood, he had roused his energies and left the enchanted island to set out once more upon the weary quest for home. He had bade the goddess farewell and sailed away from the island of sweet lust to seek a ghostly counsellor and to drink deep at that fountain of wisdom which was once the glory of Thebes.
When Circe had bade him, if he would indeed get back to Ithaca and leave her arms, seek the dead Tiresias in the place of the dead it had seemed an easy thing.
What were pale ghosts to a warrior of Troyland and the vanquisher of Polyphemus? If the old seer alone could tell him how to conquer the wrath of Poseidon and win to his wife’s arms once more, should he not go with a will?
