that has been often told, of the fair and frail one who had fallen among
the pitiless. For her there was no compassion either in mortals or in
immortals. It was the tragedy of sweet beauty desecrated and lost, the
petrifying horror of which has found its most unflinching modern
expression in Thomas Hardy's _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. _Corruptio
optimi pessima_.

To interpret such stories as these by any reference to the rising sun,
or the rivalry between night and dawn, is simply to stultify the science
of interpretation. It may, indeed, have been true that most of those who
told and heard the tale in ancient times accepted it in its own right,
and without either the desire or the thought of further meanings. Yet,
even told in that fashion, as it clung to memory and imagination, it
must continually have reminded men of certain features of essential
human nature, which it but too evidently recorded. Here was one of the
sad troop of soulless women who appear in the legends of all the races
of mankind. Medusa had herself been petrified before she turned others
to stone. The horror that had come upon her life had been too much to
bear, and it had killed her heart within her.

So far of passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. But
this story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's head
must rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that may
petrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when the
dazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has come
the cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and,
on a wider scale, the sight of the pain and the tragedy of the world,
present to the eyes of every generation the spectacle of victims
standing petrified like those who had seen too much at the cave's mouth
in the old legend.