[The glen, down which a limpid and murmuring brook descends, with numerous tiny cascades and pools. Beside one of the latter, underneath a great beech-tree, and sitting on the root of it, Aphrodite, alone. Enter from below, concealed at first by the undergrowth, Ares. It is mid-day.]

Aphrodite [to herself].

Here he comes at last, and from the opposite direction.... No! that cannot be Phoebus.... Ah! it is you, then!

Ares.

Is it possible? Your Majesty—and alone!

Aphrodite.

Phoebus offered me the rustic entertainment of gathering wild raspberries. We found some at length, and regaled ourselves. I wished for more, and Phoebus, with his usual gallantry, wandered dreamily away into the forest on the quest. He has evidently lost his way. I sat me down on this tree and waited.

Ares.

Surely it is the first time that you were ever abroad unattended. I am amazed at the carelessness of Phoebus. Aphrodite—without an attendant!

Aphrodite.

That is rather a fatuous remark, and from you of all people in the world. My most agreeable reminiscences are, without exception, connected with occasions on which I had escaped from my body-guard of nymphs. At the present moment you would do well to face the fact, Ares, that I have but a single maid, and that she has collapsed under the burdens of novelty and exile.

Ares.

Is that my poor friend Cydippe?

Aphrodite.

You have so many friends, Ares. Poor Cydippe, then, broke down this morning in moaning hysterics after having borne up just long enough to do my hair. I really came out on this rather mad adventure after the raspberries to escape the dolours of her countenance, and the last thing I saw was her chlamys flung wildly over her head as she dived down upon the floor in misery. Such consolations as this island has to give me will not proceed from what you call my attendant. You do not look well, Ares.

Ares.

I am always well. I am still incensed.

Aphrodite.

Ah, you are oppressed by our misfortunes?

Ares.

I can think of nothing else.

Aphrodite.

You do not, I hope, give way to the most foolish of the emotions, and endure the silly torture of self-reproach?

Ares.

I have nothing to reproach myself with. Our forces had never been in smarter trim, public spirit in Olympus never more patriotic and national; and as to the personal bravery of our forces, it was simply a portent of moral splendour.

Aphrodite.

And your discipline?

Ares.

It was perfect. I had led the troops up to the point of cheerfully marching and counter-marching until they were ready to drop with exhaustion, on the eve of each engagement; and at the ends of all our practising-grounds brick walls had been set up, at which every officer made it a point of honour to tilt head-foremost once a day. There was no refinement preserved from the good old wars of chivalry which was not familiar to our gallant fellows, and I had expressly forbidden every species of cerebral exercise. Nothing, I have always said, is so hurtful to the temper of an army as for the rank and file to suspect that they are led by men of brains.

Aphrodite.

There every one must do you justice, Ares. I never heard even the voice of prejudice raised to accuse you.

Ares.

No; I do not think any one could have the effrontery to charge me with encouraging that mental effort which is so disastrous to the work of a soldier. The same old practices which led our forefathers to glory—the courage of tigers; the firm belief that if any one tried to be crafty it must be because he is a coward; a bull-front set straight at every obstacle, whatever its nature; a proper contempt for any plan or discovery made since the days of Father Uranus—these are the principles in which I disciplined our troops, and I will not admit that I can have anything to reproach myself with. The circumstances which we were unexpectedly called upon to face were such as could never have been anticipated.

Aphrodite.

I do not see that you could have done otherwise than, as you did, to refuse with dignity to anticipate anything so revolutionary.

Ares.

There are certain things which one seems to condone by merely acknowledging their existence. That employment of mobile mechanisms, for instance——

Aphrodite.

Do not speak of it! I could never have believed that the semblance of the military could be made so excessively distasteful to me.

Ares.

Can I imagine myself admitting the necessity of guarding against such an ungentlemanlike form of attack?

Aphrodite.

Your friends are all aware, Ares, that if the conditions were to return, you would never demean yourself and them by guarding against anything of the kind. But I advise you not to brood upon the past. Your figure will suffer. You must keep up your character for solid and agile exercises.

Ares.

It will not be easy for me to occupy myself here. I am accustomed, as you know, to hunting and slaying. I thought I might have enjoyed some sport with the barbarian islanders, and I selected one for the purpose. But Zeus intervened, with that authority which even here, in our shattered estate, we know not how to resist.

Aphrodite.

Did he give any reason for preventing the combat?

Ares.

Yes; and his reasons (I was bound to admit) carried some weight with them. He said, first, that it was wrong to kill those who had received us with so generous a hospitality; and secondly, that, as I am no longer immortal, this brawny savage, with hair so curiously coiled and matted over his brain-pan, might kill me; and thirdly, that the whole affair might indirectly lead to his, Zeus', personal inconvenience. Here then is enjoyment by one door quite shut out from me.

Aphrodite.

Are there not deer in these woods, and perhaps wolves and boars? There must be wild duck on the firth, and buzzards in the rocks. Instead of challenging the barbarians to a foolish trial of strength, why not make them your companions, and learn their accomplishments?

Ares.

It is possible that I shall do so. But for the present, anger gushes like an intermittent spring of bitter water in my bosom. I forget for a moment, and the fountain falls; and then, with a rush, memory leaps up in me, a column of poison. I say to myself, It cannot be, it shall not be; but I grow calm again and find that it is.

Aphrodite.

The worst of the old immortality was the carelessness of it. We were utterly unprepared for anything bordering on catastrophe, and behold, without warning, we are swept away in a complete cataclysm of our fortunes. I see, Ares, that it will be long before you can recover serenity, or take advantage of the capabilities of our new existence. They will appeal to you more slowly than to the rest of us, and you will respond more unwillingly, because of your lack—your voluntary and boasted lack—of all intellectual suppleness.

Ares.

It is not the business of a soldier to be supple.

Aphrodite.

So it appears. And you will suffer for it. For, stiff and blank as you may determine to be, circumstances will overpower you. Under their influences you will not be able to avoid becoming softer and more redundant. But you will resist the process, I see, and you will make it as painful as you can.

Ares.

You discuss my case with a cheerful candour, Aphrodite. Are you sure of being happier yourself?

Aphrodite.

Not sure; but I have a reasonable confidence that I shall be fairly contented. For I, at least, am supple, and I court the influences which you think it a point of gallantry to resist.

Ares.

You will continue, I suppose, to make your main business the stimulating and the guiding of the affections? Here I admit that suppleness, as you call it, is in place.

Aphrodite.

Unfortunately, even here, immortality was no convenient prelude to our present state. We did not, indeed, neglect the heart——

Ares.

If I forget all else, there must be events——

Aphrodite.

Alas! we loved so briefly and with so facile a susceptibility, that I am tempted to ask myself whether in Olympus we really loved at all.

Ares [with ardour].

There, at least, memory supplies me with no sort of doubt——

Aphrodite [coldly].

Let us keep to generalities. Looking broadly at our experience, I should say that the misfortune of the gods, as a preparation for their mortality, was that in their deathless state the affections fell at the foot of the tree, like these withered leaves. We should have fastened the branches of life together in long elastic wires of the thin-drawn gold of perdurable sentiment.

Ares.

The rapture, the violence, the hammering pulse, the bursting heart,—I see no resemblance between these and the leaves that flutter at our feet.

Aphrodite.

These leaves had their moment of vitality, when the sap rushed through their veins, when their tissue was like a ripple of sparkling emerald on the face of the smiling sky. But they could not preserve their glow, and they are the more hopelessly dead now, because they burned in their green fire so fiercely.

Ares.

We felt no shadow of coming disability strike across our pleasures.

Aphrodite.

No; but that was precisely what made our immortality such an ill preparation for a brief existence on this island. In Olympus the sentiment of yesterday was forgotten, and we realised the passion of to-day as little as the caprice of to-morrow. Perhaps this fragmentary tenderness was the real chastisement of our implacable prosperity.

Ares [in a very low voice].

Can we not resume in this our exile, and with more prospect of continuity, the emotions which were so agreeable in our former state? So agreeable—although, as you justly say, too ephemeral [coming a little closer]. Can you not teach us to moderate and to prolong the rapture?

Aphrodite [rising to her feet].

It may be. We shall see, Ares. But one thing I have already perceived. In this mortal sphere, the heart needs solitude, it needs silence. It must have its questionings and its despairs. The triumphant supremacy of the old emotions cannot be repeated here. For we have a new enemy to contend with. Even if love should prosecute its conquests here in all the serenity of success, it will not be able to escape from an infliction worse than any which we dreamed of when we were immortals.

Ares.

And what is that, Aphrodite?

Aphrodite.

The blight of indifference.

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