Her steady eyes looked straight into his as she replied: "It was
Kingsley's 'Heroes' and if only I were a boy I would be like Perseus and
go and kill the Gorgon and rescue Andromeda from the sea monster. Pallas
Athené said some fine things to him--do you remember?--when she asked
him the question of which sort of man he would be."

"No, I don't remember," said John Derringham. "You must tell me now."

Then Halcyone began in a soft dream voice while her eyes widened and
darkened with that strange look as though she saw into another and
vaster world. "'I am Pallas Athené and I know the thoughts of all men's
hearts, and discern their manhood or their baseness. And from the souls
of clay I turn away; and they are blest, but not by me. They fatten at
ease like sheep in the pasture and eat what they did not sow, like oxen
in the stall. They grow and spread like the gourd along the ground, but
like the gourd they give no shade to the traveler and when they are ripe
death gathers them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name
vanishes out of the land.'"

She paused a second and John Derringham was astonished at himself
because he was conscious of experiencing a thrill of deep interest.

"Yes?" he said--and her voice went on:

"'But to the souls of fire I give more fire and to those who are manful
I give a might more than man's. These are the heroes, the sons of the
Immortals who are blest but not like the souls of clay, for I drive them
forth by strange paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and
monsters, the enemies of gods and men. Through doubt and need and danger
and battle I drive them, and some of them are slain in the flower of