“Surely thou dost not repent?” she said.
He replied as if he had not heard her question—
“Canst thou not remain with me a few months in this city until I arrange some kind of order? There are none left now but the people thou hast seen, as harmless as sheep, and, without a ruler, as helpless. My brothers were weaker than I, but every one played some necessary part. If I leave the city without a guiding mind, a disaster is possible. Why art thou in such haste to be gone? Thine enemies are irrevocably dead.”
“I fear even the dead,” she answered. “I cannot stay in this place.”
“Not even with me—in the first glow of our love?”
“Restore me to Greece,” she said, “and then, if thou wilt, return hither and put in order the affairs of thy giants and pigmies.”
“And this,” he said bitterly, “is thy love, when for thee I have sacrificed everything.”
“Restore me to Greece,” she said; “I can stay no longer in this dreadful place.”
He yielded, and in silence conducted her to the car. Then he said to her with gentle, affectionate persuasion—
“Drink again of the nepenthe, and thou shalt awake in Athens.”