ENIPEUS

I won’t mince words, Poseidon. Your behaviour’s been disgraceful—tricking my sweetheart ¹ by impersonating me, and leading the child astray. She thought I was doing it and submitted.

POSEIDON

You were so proud and so slow, Enipeus. A pretty girl like that came to you every day, dying of love, and you wouldn’t look at her, but enjoyed tormenting her! She would wander about your banks, putting her feet in and washing sometimes, praying for your love, but you always turned up your nose at her.

ENIPEUS

Even if I did, what right had you to forestall me and steal her love, pretending to be Enipeus rather than Poseidon, and winning a simple girl like Tyro by a trick?

POSEIDON

It’s too late to be jealous now, Enipeus. You despised her before. Tyro’s suffered no harm. She thought it was you.

ENIPEUS

Oh, no! When you left her, you said you were Poseidon, and that upset her very much. It was unfair to me, too, for you to enjoy pleasures that should be mine, making a blue wave arch above you and hide you both, and making love to the girl in my place.

POSEIDON

Yes, but only because you didn’t want her, Enipeus.

Doris

Crying, dear?

Thetis

Oh, Doris, I have just seen a lovely girl thrown into a chest by her father, and her little baby with her; and he gave the chest to some sailors, and told them, as soon as they were far enough from the shore, to drop it into the water; he meant them to be drowned, poor things.

Doris

Oh, sister, but why? What was it all about? Did you hear?

Thetis

Her father, Acrisius, wanted to keep her from marrying. And, as she was so pretty, he shut her up in an iron room. And I don’t know whether it’s true—but they say that Zeus turned himself into gold, and came showering down through the roof, and she caught the gold in her lap,—and it was Zeus all the time. And then her father found out about it—he is a horrid, jealous old man—and he was furious, and thought she had been receiving a lover; and he put her into the chest, the moment the child was born.

Doris

And what did she do then?

Thetis

She never said a word against her own sentence; she was ready to submit: but she pleaded hard for the child’s life, and cried, and held him up for his grandfather to see; and there was the sweet babe, that thought no harm, smiling at the waves. I am beginning again, at the mere remembrance of it.

Doris

You make me cry, too. And is it all over?

Thetis

No; the chest has carried them safely so far; it is by Seriphus.

Doris

Then why should we not save them? We can put the chest into those fishermen’s nets, look; and then of course they will be hauled in, and come safe to shore.

Thetis

The very thing. She shall not die; nor the child, sweet treasure!