The guests gasped and drew back a space at this audacious sacrilege. Side, however, smiled, well pleased. For in her secret heart she thought her
ardent lover spoke but the truth, and that had she been in Hera's place there would have been no need of the reconciliation with Zeus, for which the Dædala was held.
The large-eyed Queen of Heaven heard the rash speech and saw the presumption of this earth-born maiden. Her majestic brows knit in anger—and it was as if a cloud passed across the face of the sun. Sternly she refused the wedding sacrifice to herself, the Perfecter and Fulfiller, and all the folk were aghast at this portent.
But Side still smiled, serene in her blind conceit.
"Am I not perfect enough for you to worship?" said she softly to Orion.
His ardent answer was interrupted by a crash of thunder from the clear sky. Swiftly a great darkness fell upon the smiling plain. The merrymakers were blanched with fear as this blackness engulfed everything. They spoke in strained whispers. Darker and darker it grew, till one could not see his terrified neighbor's face. Even the murmurings ceased. All waited for some dread happening, they knew not what.
The silence was pierced by a sudden scream.
"Side!" cried Orion. "Side! Where are you?" He rushed wildly about, upsetting all in his path.
There was the sound of a rushing wind, nothing more. Then the gloom lifted as mysteriously as it had come.
But the bride was nowhere to be found. The wedding party crept to their homes. No earthly eye ever again beheld the presumptuous Side. The wise ones