Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
Sun, sea, hills, and shore wrought together to make one glorious harmony, endless variety, yet ordered and fashioned into a divine whole. “Euopis,” “The Fair-Faced,” the beauty-loving dwellers of the country called it, and they named aright. Something of the beauty touched even Hermione as she stood on the hill slope, gazing across the sea. Only Cleopis was with her.
She felt him seize her girdle. He swung her face to face. She saw his wide eyes, his mad smile. His hot breath smote her cheek. Cleopis at last was screaming. “Mine,” he triumphed, while he forced her resisting head to his own, “there is none to hinder!” But even while the woman’s flesh crept back at his impure kiss, a giant power came rending the twain apart.
“My father!” she cried, falling into his arms, “is it still the day of the Panathenæa, when I marched in the great procession, when all Athens called me happy? It was a thousand years ago! I can never be glad again—” He lifted her tenderly as she fainted. Old Cleopis, the Spartan nurse who had kissed her almost before her mother, ran to her.
But in mere desire to make her dark cloud break, her parents were continually giving Hermione pain. She guessed it long before her father’s wishes passed beyond vaguest hints. She heard him praising Democrates, his zeal for Athens and Hellas, his fair worldly prospects, and there needed no diviner to reveal Hermippus’s hidden meaning. Once she overheard Cleopis talking with another maid.
What, however, puzzled Lysistra most, was the fact that Cleopis did not contradict her young mistress in the least, but maintained a mysterious silence about the whole adventure. The night after his adventure on the hill slope Democrates received in his chambers no less an individual than Hiram.
There was something uncanny about the strange sailor; she hid away the half-daric, and related nothing of her adventure even to her confidant Cleopis. Three days later Democrates was not drinking wine at his betrothal feast, but sending this cipher letter by a swift and trusty “distance-runner” to Sparta. “Democrates to Lycon, greeting:—At Corinth I cursed you.
Phormio refused the drachma brusquely, but kept the tryst. Cleopis had the key to the garden, and would contrive anything for her mistress—especially as all Athens knew Phormio was harmless save with his tongue. That evening for the first time Hermione heard the true story of Glaucon’s escape by the Solon, but when the fishmonger paused she hung down her head closer. “You saved him, then?
Hermippus—himself full five years grayer on account of the calamity—had taken his daughter again to quiet Eleusis, where there was less to remind her of that terrible night at Colonus. She spent the autumn and winter in an unbroken shadow life, with only her mother and old Cleopis for companions. Reasons not yet told to the world gave her a little hope and comfort.
Hermione sent a last glance around the disordered aula; her mother called to the bevy of pallid, whimpering maids. Cleopis was bearing Phœnix, but Hermione took him from her. Only his own mother should bear him now. They went through the thinning Agora and took one hard look at each familiar building and temple. When they should return to them, the inscrutable god kept hid.
One can see Hermippus’s and Lysistra’s purpose with half an eye.” “Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?” The young mistress’s eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie: “Ei! dear little lady, don’t flash up so!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking