“Glaucon—Glaucon!”
“Myrina—Myrina—Myrina!”
The two embraced with a stormy passion. They held each other’s hands. The fluting, fluting of the musicians, far among the columns, hidden by flowering bushes, sounded sweet as springtime on Olympus. “I have loved you from the first!”—“And I you!”—“I will love you always!”—“And I you!”
Spring joy, fair harmony, held while the moon without mounted above the olive trees. Then, little by little, again the voices grew iron and poison came into the taste.
“But if you loved me—!”
“But if you loved me—!”
“Dion’s footfall beside your litter.... Strephon’s music in your ear! Every day, through Athens, goes your litter, and there is drawn a throng. On high days, at spectacles, you are pointed out to strangers. There is Myrina, that Glaucon the statesman thinks loves him—”
“I would not live indoors like a wife—sampling the sun only under favour!”
“I would that the law held you by the arm as it does the wife—”
“Father Zeus, Poseidon, Hades—these three have parted among them earth, sea, and sky! Beneath Olympus, they have given to men their favourites, earth and sea and sky! Now, what will men give to women? Their love!—Oh, oh, their love!”