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she did with no change of expression and with the same unmoved, unsmiling, unhappy, inscrutably fixed look.
    But she knew what had happened, and she knew what bird this was; none other in fact than Heirax the Hawk, the messenger-friend of Nisos, the princely House-Helper. Heirax had been wounded in the air, either by an attack from some other bird, or by an arrow from a human bow, just as he was reaching the cliffs of Ithaca, and for the last few minutes he had been desperately flying forward in hectic jerks and feverish swoops, with the frantic hope of reaching the palace and of delivering to her friend Nisos the tremendous news he carried before loss of blood brought him down.
    But his fatal day, or, as any native of the island would have put it, his predestined “Keer” had come. He felt himself falling, and impelled by the natural instinct of all dying creatures to seek a hiding-place, he deliberately swerved so as to fall in “Arima”. It was only when quite close to the ground that he realized that he was destined to fall at the feet of the one single person belonging to the palace who was no friend of his friend Nisos. Leipephile was his best girl-friend and in his thoughts Heirax always pronounced that simple creature’s name as if it had been Leip-filly; thus totally avoiding the proper stress with Its accent on the “peph” that flippant second syllable.
    Heirax’s pronunciation made the name more dignified aswell as more appealing, though the sound of the word thus uttered would have made Agelaos, the girl’s betrothed, want to treat him as alas! the hawk was going to be treated now.
    Not for nothing had the Trojan girl always stayed awake while the rest of them, including the king’s old nurse, nodded in weariness under the eternal divagations of their “much-enduring” lord. “Tell me, Heirax,” whispered Arsinöe now: “what your news is and I will swear by any oath you choose that I will tell it to Nisos. If you tell me, I will carry you back to the palace where they have drugs that will strengthen your spirit, and ointments that will stop the blood, and potions that will heal the pain. But if you will not tell me …” And she pressed her knuckles against the bird’s throat.
    And Heirax the hawk said to himself: “It matters nothing whether I tell or refuse to tell. The news is bound to spread anyway. The only loss will be to Nisos and me. I shall lose the pleasure of telling him and he will lose the pleasure of being told by me.” He shifted his position slightly against her left breast and opening his beak made the sounds that Nisos had taught him.
    Nisos had been a good teacher for a Hawk, especially for one born on a small island and accustomed to rocks and shores and sands and caves and curving waves and tossing wisps of foam. So his words were clear as to their meaning; though they were ungrammatical and disconnected in their utterance.
    “Zeus,” he whistled—and at each sound drops of blood oozed from the wound in his side—“thunder lost …
                          peak of Gargaros …
    … alone … Hera on Olympos …
        … alone …
    Trojans rebuilding Troy in Italy …
    … Rome … Seven Hills … Tartaros
                              broken loose …
        Niobe weeps no more …
    … Chaos comes back …
                               Persephone
         … leaves Aidoneus …
              Prometheus escapes …
              … Cheiron free …
                      Helios conquers
                                    Apollo … 
         … Atlas no longer
               … the sky …
    the Mysteries … blown far and wide …
               … Typhon free …”
    Here there was a long pause; and in the interval the Trojan girl could hear the hoarse voices of those two Pillars of Cloud raised in an absorbed argument with each other.