The Nine Muses Minus One by Barry Pain

If Euterpe had happened to have been born a pronoun, she would not have been demonstrative or personal. She would have been self-possessive. With all her shyness, she had herself perfectly in hand. She always was a little in love with somebody, but that was a secret she never told herself. Some gentle reason guided all that she did. And now for some little time she had been watching Erato, who was stretched in her favourite attitude on the floor of the cloud-chamber.

Now Erato had not even pretended to pay the slightest attention to Polymnia's story. She was thinking -- and thinking. She thought easiest when she was lying on her back. Her hands were clasped behind her head, and she looked upwards with wide-opened eyes. You never saw such eyes. They told one half the story, how -- with all her waywardness and petulance and laughter -- love was the life of her. And now, as she lay dreaming, it seemed that it was noon in Sicily, and the flocks were sleeping; and he rested in the shade -- he, the shepherd -- singing. And now, again, the noon had passed and the night had fallen; in the dim cavern the air was fragrant and cool; one heard no footsteps on the thin white sand; she said nothing to him, nor he to her, for all was said and sleep was near; only for a little while they listened, and heard the great sea singing its song eternal. And it all was over and gone. For the gods are dead, and the steam-roller goes about the streets; and we are all either brutes or prigs, and most of us are both, and there is no more love-making. I, of course -- a spiritual nature, very highly civilised -- can see that we live in an age of progress and omnibuses, and can be thankful for it. But Erato, poor child, did not take many things seriously -- only love and the service of it. And it happened, every now and then, that some such fit of despondency or fierce sorrow would capture her as had captured her now. Of late this had been happening too often. To-night it was the song which Euterpe had sung that had set her pondering -- now thrilling her with some exquisite recollection, now saddening her as she thought of the present time, the epoch of the brute and the prude. It was half-pitiful to watch, as Euterpe was watching, and to see the laughter all die away from those red lips, and the eyes grow liquid and suddenly close, and the tightening of the little hands, and the hurried breathing.