_Pel._ What, what!

_Pha._ [_To Stesilaus_] Forgive your child!

_Alc._ The priest----

_Ste._ My child?

_Alc._ The priest has made us one.

_Pel._ What priest? Who dared Defile the altar with such rite?

_Alc._ [_Rising_] Defile?

Though you're my Phania's father, you shall cast No stain upon that holy ceremony Whose odor yet is round us. Sir, the priest Has blessed us. Do you as you please. Come, Phania!

Come, sweet! We'll smile at this. Though a father's curse Bethorn our way, a gentler heaven will drop Its soft approval where thy feet must pa.s.s. [_Going_]

_Pel._ Speak, Stesilaus! Stop your wretched son!

_Alc._ Not wretched, sir, while Phania is my own.

We shall be blest when you, too late, beseech Unhearing G.o.ds forgive you this!

_Pel._ Stay, sir!

O, miserable boy!

_Pha._ No, father, no!

He's happy in my love as leaf in air, As the sea-crystalled fish, as lotos in Its pool,--and I--O, sir, my joy has wings, And tho' I love you dear and daughterly,-- Who gave me life,--your anger has no weight To keep my feet on earth. Like twirling lark Too high for storm to reach, I dance above Displeasure's cloud. [_Trips off with Alcanor_]

_Pel._ Sweet wretches! Here's a turn!

My little Phania! Friend, what shall we do?

_Ste._ Again the finger of the G.o.ds.

_Pel._ The G.o.ds To limbo! I will save my daughter!

_Ste._ Yours?

_Pel._ Yea, by each hour of prattle at my knee!

By all my care that's been her constant nurse, And every joy that from devotion sprang To meet me like a flower as she grew, She's mine, mine, mine! Oh, Stesilaus, oh, Whosever she may be, I love the chick, And she shall not be d.a.m.ned!

[_Enter, upper left, Sachinessa and Archippe_]

_Ste._ Here's a reproach Comes with a dual mouth. If we show doubt, They'll put us under pestle. Rally, sir!

_Sac._ [_To Archippe_] Are you all lump? Pick up your courage. Why!

The G.o.ds are G.o.ds by their audacity.

I'll bring it off. Now, Pelagon?

_Pel._ [_Who has turned to flee_] What, you, My love?

_Sac._ Such heavy news! Enough to make The G.o.ds no more co-venture with a world Augmented so!

_Pel._ What, Sachinessa, what?

_Sac._ Our Phania's married to Alcanor.

_Pel._ Eh?

_Sac._ Now are you pleased? Now is your cruelty Full-fed, or must it glut again?

_Pel._ My sweet----

_Sac._ You'll meddle with high Zeus! Have you enough?

_Pel._ Oh, Sachinessa!

_Sac._ Brother and sister bound In an abhorrent union that will drive Their shades forever from Elysian ground!

Nay, even Hades will make fast her gates 'Gainst such offenders, innocently vile!

Archippe, speak to that unbending man, Half author of this shame! I'd thin his beard If Heaven had mocked me with his long, smug face For husband! Ugh! The whiskered horse!

_Arc._ Dumb, sir?

You've no defence?--no master argument To prove your wisdom's never off the road To Zeus' gate? Not once in all your life, Although your daughter's to her brother wedded?

_Ste._ 'Tis well. I can not doubt the G.o.ds.

[_They stare at him_]

_Arc._ Her brother born?

So foul a hap?

_Ste._ A thing too dread in thought, And in the act unutterable if Zeus Be unconcerned in it. Therefore believe His hand here moves, and holy majesty O'errules the mortal scruple, so dividing This horror from its kind. May it not be The blood of Stesilaus hath in 'ts flow A heavenly tinct that makes it not a sin, But rather virtue, to keep pure the stream From baser founts? They've done no more than kings And G.o.ds before them.

_Sac._ Pelagon, _your_ croak!

_Pel._ I take a lower ground, my dearest dove.

All Athens knows me modest----

_Sac._ Ay to that!

Can blush as deep as any crow that flies!

_Pel._ Now, now! From first to last I've held it truth That breeding scantles birth, and on that count Make Phania our daughter.

_Sac._ Oh, you do?

_Pel._ I stand on this, that training is the man.

Or woman, let us say, and not the blood We buried with our fathers. So these two Mate not ancestrally, but in their lives That distantly upbred have not between them A structural thread to bind them of one house.

_Sac._ What men are these?

_Arc._ I am no more afraid Of him I thought was Stesilaus.