I cannot say how artlessly ran that voice in this still garden, by some strange power persuading me on, turning all doubt aside, calming all suspicion.
"There is honeycomb here, and the fruit is plenteous. Yes," she said, "and all travellers are violent men—catch and kill meat—that I know, however doleful. 'Tis but a little sigh from day to day in these cool gardens; and rest is welcome when the heart pines not. Listen, now; I will go down and you shall show me—did one have the wit to learn, and courage to remember—show me how sails your wonderful little ship; tell me, too, where on the sea's horizon to one in exile earth lies, with all its pleasant things—yet thinks so bitterly of a woman!"
"Tell me," I said; "tell me but one thing of a thousand. Whom would you seek, did a traveller direct you, and a boat were at your need?"
She looked at me, pondering, weaving her webs about me, lulling doubt, and banishing fear.
"One could not miss—a hero!" she said, flaming.
"That, then, shall be our bargain," I replied with wrath at my own folly. "Tell me this precious hero's name, and though all the dogs of the underworld come to course me, you shall take my boat, and leave me here—only this hero's name, a pedlar's bargain!"
She lowered her lids. "It must be Diomed," she said with the least sigh.
"It must be," I said.
"Nay, then, Antenor, or truly Thersites," she said happily, "the silver-tongued!"
"Good-bye, then," I said.