From her long sorrowing.

ELECTRA.

Come, your bug-bear, tell it!

If you can mention any greater grief

Than these I have, I will reply no more.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Well, I will tell you everything I know.

They are going, if you will not cease this mourning,

To send you where you will not any more

See daylight, but sing sorrow underground,

Buried alive, out of this territory.

Wherefore take heed, or by and by, in trouble

Never blame me. Prudence is easy, now.

ELECTRA.

Ay? have they purposed to do so to me?

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Most surely, when Ægisthus shall come home.

ELECTRA.

Why as for that, let him come speedily!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

What was it that you prayed for, silly one?

ELECTRA.

For him to come; if he is that way minded.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

So you may get—what treatment? Are you mad?

ELECTRA.

So I may get —farthest away from you!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

And of life present have you no regard?

ELECTRA.

Living like mine is choice, to marvel at!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

It might be, had you sense to be discreet.

ELECTRA.

Do not instruct me to be treacherous.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

I do not; but to yield to those who govern.

ELECTRA.

Well, gloze it so; you do not speak my language.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Yet it were well not to be ruined through folly.

ELECTRA.

Come ruin, if needful, in a father’s quarrel!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

I am sure our father pardons us for this.

ELECTRA.

That is the speech a villain might approve.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

You will not hearken and agree with me?

ELECTRA.

I trust I am not yet so senseless. No!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Then I will go on whither I was sent.

ELECTRA.

Where are you going? To whom bear you these offerings?

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

My mother sends me, to strew my father’s grave.

ELECTRA.

HOW

say you? To the most detested foe —

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Yes —”whom she murdered!” That is what you mean?

ELECTRA.

By whom, of all friends, bidden? At whose desire?

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Through some nocturnal panic, to my thinking.

ELECTRA.

God of my father’s, only aid me now!

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Do you gain any courage from her scare?

ELECTRA.

Tell me about the dream, and I could say.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

Only I do not know it; except just In brief, the story.

ELECTRA.

Well, but tell me that;

“Brief words ere now have often led astray —

And righted mortals.

CHRYSOTHEMIS.

It is said she saw

An apparition of your sire and mine

Come back again to daylight; and he took

The sceptre which he sometime bore himself,

But now Ægisthus bears, and planted it

Upon the hearth, and out of it a shoot

Budded and grew, till all Mycenæ’s land

Was covered with its shadow. So I heard

Related by a fellow who was by,

While to the Sun-God she disclosed her dream.

But more than this I know not; only that

She sends me on account of this alarm.

Now I beseech you, by our country’s Gods,

Listen to me, and be not ruined by folly;