because you are a man of courage and understanding, sense and self-control. Many who lay no claim to exceptional intellect have done as much-perhaps more successfully than you will. And remember for your chastening, that between the highest human intellect and the lowest, there is really no very appreciable diversity in divine eyes. The ants and locusts vary as much. They, too, have their 'intellectuals,' and the hive also knows them. One spider differs from another in cunning, and it is not the intellectual' fish that your father catches, but the duffer.

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"In truth," concluded the Shining One you hold the germ of intellect, but really little more at this stage of your history, and the very fact that you intellectuals,' so to call you, are the last persons to the fore, when anything has got to be done, shows too clearly that reason is still but a broken reed among you. The prime gift of your Creator you resolutely flout and neglect. Why, even the 'intellectuals' themselves make war on reason, using their reasoning powers to do so!"

Evander bowed his head before this lecture, which he naturally applied to certain of his friends rather than himself. He then begged for guidance as to his next move and so put his foot into it once more.

"The details are yours, not mine," replied

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Apollo coldly. One does not come to me to learn the scales on the lyre, but to listen to the utmost a lyre can be made to do. You ask me to direct your course of action and I have done so. Being an 'intellectual,' I doubt not the necessary details will lie within your reach. Your wits, I imagine, are called to cope with the right arm of Festus, for he attaches great importance to the possession of Livia, and will not suffer the woman to depart from him without such opposition as occurs to his indignant heart. Livia herself will raise no difficulty, since she aspires to be your helpmate; but regarding Festus-that is entirely your affair, and if your intelligence and craft cannot triumph over his brute strength, then you will only afford another example of what I say that the momentous affairs of the world

depend far less upon the talkers, than the talkers are prone to believe."

Evander, however, discovered in his reply that diplomacy has its uses.

"Since the ultimate appeal must lie between Apollo and Bacchus," he answered, "there can be no doubt as to the issue."

The Lord of Light was gratified.

"You have spoken well," he said, "and I entertain every hope of your success."

He then vanished, and his disciple wandered down the mountain-side, deeply conscious that, for once, physical action was demanded. He hesitated to enter a world so much outside his own. In matters of thought, he had ever moved securely; but his thought, though it had often provoked other people through irritation into action, which it is the province of thought to do, had never taken him into the field of action until now.

He regretted the necessity.

When some

thing had to be said-disagreeable or otherwise-Evander was always ready and willing; but now something had to be done.

He consoled himself with a reflection.

Everybody knows that moral bravery is much rarer and grander than physical courage," he thought. "Then it follows that I, who lack not the first gift, shall of a surety find myself endowed with the second."

He began by doubting whether there was really any need for haste; but he decided before he reached his home that haste must be made. He felt that he had better act while the mandate of Apollo still sounded in his

ears.

"To-night," he said aloud. But his own familiar voice surprised him, for there had come into it a new and untranquil tone.

B

VIII

BACCHUS AND FESTUS

Y one of those coincidences, common in real life but viewed uneasily by the artist, Festus sought his god on the evening of the day when Evander listened to Apollo.

The woodman's patience broke down at last and he began to realise the gravity of his position. Livia throve on hard words and Festus grew ashamed and miserable at uttering so many. More than her perversity, it exasperated him to feel his own failure. He was angrier with himself than with her, as so often happens in these cases, for our annoyance, when our will fails to impose itself upon another, is really personal, though at the time we imagine otherwise.

Festus now felt the situation no longer to