By the way, she explains the delights of love, of marriage,
the husband once out of the way; finds in him, with misgiving, a sort
of forwardness, as she thinks, on this one matter, as if he
understood her craft and despised it. He met her questions in truth
with scarce so much as contempt, with laughing counter-queries, why
people needed wedding at all? They might have found the children in
the temples, or bought them, as you could buy flowers in Athens.
Meantime Phaedra's young children draw from the seemingly unconscious
finger the marriage-ring, set it spinning on the floor at his feet,
and the staid youth places it for a moment on his own finger for
safety. As it settles there, his step-mother, aware all the while,
suddenly presses his hand over it. He found the ring there that
night as he lay; left his bed in the darkness, and again, for safety,
put it on the finger of the image, wedding once for all that so
kindly mystical mother. And still, even amid his earthly mother's
terrible misgivings, he seems to foresee a charming career marked out
before him in friendly Athens, to the height of his desire. Grateful
that he is here at all, sharing at last so freely life's banquet, he
puts himself for a moment in his old place, recalling his old
enjoyment of the pleasure of others; [180] feels, just then, no
different.
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