Fair Game 



I gathered them about me and slipped out by the 

 back door. 



And would Dido as a damsel intent upon her 

 sacrifices and their omens, have stirred the aspira- 

 tions of her priest or been conscious of them if 

 she had? She saw him, I feel sure, but as an inter- 

 mediary who should make her hetacombs accept- 

 able to jealous gods. Think you, as they smoked 

 upward to the quiet heavens that he would have 

 broken in upon her piety with the request that 

 she breakfast with him at the "templum domes- 

 ticvmi" next door. A sense of fitness would have 

 told him that it were better to incur the wrath of 

 Jove and Juno for once united though in anger, 

 than to so presume. His chariot, a snug two- 

 wheeler, suited modestly to his parochial duties, 

 but otherwise the legendary vehicle for court- 

 ship, was — ^he would have known — not quite the 

 thing to convey her from devotions home. 



A bizarre memory comes back to me of myself, 

 round-eyed in wonder at my own predicament, 

 sharing at the rectory a breakfast that I had not 

 known how politely to refuse. Very dark the 

 room and very far removed from the bright com- 



[183] 



