with the darkness of Chimera.

"When shall we decide the wager?" asked Hermes.

"Immediately. To-day!"

"During her husband's absence she sleeps in the store. You can stand
in the street before the door. If she raises the curtain and opens the
gate, I have lost my wager."

"You have lost it already!" exclaimed the Far-darting Apollo.

The summer lightning does not pass from the East to the West as
quickly as he rushed over the salt waves of the Archipelago. There he
asked Amphitrite for an empty turtle-shell, put around it the rays of
the sun, and returned to Athens with a ready formiga.

In the city everything was already quiet. The lights were out, and
only the houses and temples shone white in the light of the moon,
which had risen high in the sky.

The store was dark, and in it, behind a gate and a curtain, the
beautiful Eryfile was asleep. Apollo the Radiant began to touch the
strings of his lyre. Wishing to awake softly his beloved, he played at
first as gently as swarms of mosquitoes singing on a summer evening
on Illis. But the song became gradually stronger like a brook in the
mountain after a rain; then more powerful, sweeter, more intoxicating,
and it filled the air voluptuously.

The secret Athena's bird flew softly from the Acropolis and sat