Oh, she was beautiful, and of a sweetness most alluring and fatal!
Had Medea worn such a look, sure Jason had quite forgot the
fleece, and with those eyes Circe had needed no other charm to
make men what she would. Her voice, when she spoke, was no
longer imperious; it was low pleading music. And she held out
entreating hands.

"Have pity on me," she said. "Listen kindly, and have pity on me.
You are a strong man and wear a sword. You can cut your way
through trouble and peril. I am a woman, weak, friendless,
helpless. I was in distress and peril, and I had no arm to save, no
knight to fight my battle. I do not love deceit. Ah, do not think that
I have not hated myself for the lie I have been. But these forest
creatures that you take, - will they not bite against springe and
snare? Are they scrupulous as to how they free themselves? I too
was in the toils of the hunter, and I too was not scrupulous. There
was a thing of which I stood in danger that would have been
bitterer to me, a thousand times, than death. I had but one thought,
to escape; how, I did not care, - only to escape. I had a waiting
woman named Patience Worth. One night she came to me,
weeping. She had wearied of service, and had signed to go to
Virginia as one of Sir Edwyn Sandys' maids, and at the last
moment her heart had failed her. There had been pressure brought
to bear upon me that day, - I had been angered to the very soul. I
sent her away with a heavy bribe, and in her dress and under her
name I fled from - I went aboard that ship. No one guessed that I
was not the Patience Worth to whose name I answered. No one
knows now, - none but you, none but you."