He met the maiden face to face, and his eyes betrayed his passion; and she too felt the power of love in secret, and repelled him not, but by her silence and tranquillity encouraged him to hope:
ὁ δ' ἔνδοθι θυμὸν ἰάνθη
ὅττι πόθον συνέηκε καὶ οὐκ ἀπεσείσατο κούρη.[259]
So far one hundred and nine lines of the poem have carried us. The following one hundred and eleven lines, nearly a third of the whole, are devoted to the scene in the temple between Hero and her lover. This forms by far the most beautiful section of the tale; for the attention is concentrated on the boy and girl between whom love at first sight has just been born. In the twilight of early evening, in the recesses of the shrine, they stand together, like fair forms carved upon a bass-relief. Leander pleads and Hero listens. The man's wooing, the maiden's shrinking; his passionate insistance, her gradual yielding, are described in a series of exquisite and artful scenes, wherein the truth of a natural situation is enhanced by rare and curious touches. With genuine Greek instinct the poet has throughout been mindful to present both lovers clearly to the eye, so that a succession of pictures support and illustrate the dialogue, which rises at the climax to a love-duet. The descriptive lines are very simple, like these:
ἠρέμα μὲν θλίβων ῥοδοειδέα δάκτυλα κούρης
βυσσόθεν ἐστονάχιζεν ἀθέσφατον. ἡ δὲ σιωπῇ,
οἷά τε χωομένη, ῥοδέην ἐξέσπασε χεῖρα.[260]
Or again:
παρθενικῆς δ' εὔοδμον ἐΰχροον αὐχένα κύσας.[261]
Or yet again:
ὄφρα μὲν οὖν ποτὶ γαῖαν ἔχεν νεύουσαν ὀπωπήν,
τόφρα δὲ καὶ Λείανδρος ἐρωμανέεσσι προσώποις
οὐ κάμεν εἰσορόων ἁπαλόχροον αὐχένα κούρης.[262]
We do not want more than this: it is enough to animate the plastic figures presented to our fancy. Meanwhile Hero cannot resist the pleadings of Leander, and her yielding is described with beautiful avoidance of superfluous sentiment:
ἤδη καὶ γλυκύπικρον ἐδέξατο κέντρον ἐρώτων,
θέρμετο δὲ κραδίην γλυκερῷ πυρὶ παρθένος Ἡρώ
κάλλεϊ δ' ἱμερόεντος ἀνεπτοίητο Λεάνδρου.[263]