"Were the apples like that--oh, what was it? you know the name of it--
that the other gods used to eat?"

"Ambrosia? Yes, something like it, but not quite. You know the gods who
ate ambrosia would live forever and are living still; we have seen some
of them ourselves up among the stars. But these gods have to eat the
apples often, and they must get them from the Goddess of Love. This is
much the better story of the two, I think, because it shows us how gods
and other people, as long as they keep love with them, will be always
young, no matter how many years they may live; and how, if they let it
go away from them, they will be old at once, no matter how few their
years.

"All this the Father and the Mother of the Gods are talking over
together now, and he tells her how the Fire God, who proposed the
bargain in the first place, said that the price need never be paid and
that he trusts the Fire God may yet find some way out of the trouble.
Yet the giants must be made in some way to give up their price of
themselves, for the Father of the Gods has the words of the promise cut
upon his spear, and he cannot break a promise that he has once made.
The Fire God has gone away now to search through the world for
something that may be offered to the giants instead of the Goddess of
Love. And now I see her come, running to the Father of the Gods for
protection, and the other gods are here, to help her if they can, and
the giants themselves have come to claim her for the building of the
castle.

"Well, to be sure, they are all in a fine state of excitement. The
giants are big, dreadful-looking fellows, with clubs made of the trunks
of trees, and the poor goddess does not want to go with them in the