her native land.  And yet it was a god prompted her deed of shame.  Before, she did not cherish in her heart such sin, such grievous sin, from which began the woe which stretched to us.  But now, when you have clearly told the tokens of our bed, which no one else has seen, but only you and I and the single servant, Actoris, whom my father gave me on my coming here to keep the door of our closed chamber,—­you make even my ungentle heart believe.”

So she spoke, and stirred still more his yearning after tears; and he began to weep, holding his loved and faithful wife.  As when the welcome land appears to swimmers, whose sturdy ship Neptune wrecked at sea, confounded by the winds and solid waters; a few escape the foaming sea and swim ashore; thick salt foam crusts their flesh; they climb the welcome land, and are escaped from danger; so welcome to her gazing eyes appeared her husband.  From round his neck she never let her white arms go.  And rosy-fingered dawn had found them weeping, but a different plan the goddess formed, clear-eyed Athene.  She checked the long night in its passage, and at the ocean-stream she stayed the gold-throned dawn, and did not suffer it to yoke the swift-paced horses which carry light to men, Lampus and Phaethon, which bear the dawn.  And now to his wife said wise Ulysses,—­

“O wife, we have not reached the end of all our trials yet.  Hereafter comes a task immeasurable, long and severe, which I must needs fulfill; for so the spirit of Tiresias told me, that day when I descended to the house of Hades to learn about the journey of my comrades and myself.  But come, my wife, let us to bed, that there at last we may refresh ourselves with pleasant sleep.”

Then said to him heedful Penelope, “The bed shall be prepared whenever your heart wills, now that the Gods have let you reach your stately house and native land.  But since you speak of this, and God inspires your heart, come, tell that trial.  In time to come, I know, I shall experience it.  To learn about it now, makes it no worse.”

Then wise Ulysses answered her and said, “Lady, why urge me so insistently to tell?  Well, I will speak it out; I will not hide it.  Yet your heart will feel no joy; I have no joy myself; for Tiresias bade me go to many a peopled town, bearing in hand a shapely oar, till I should reach the men that know no sea and do not eat food mixed with salt.  These, therefore, have no knowledge of the red-cheeked ships, nor of the shapely oars which are the wings of ships.  And this was the sign, he said, easy to be observed.  I will not hide it from you.  When another traveler, meeting me, should say I had a winnowing-fan on my white shoulder, there in the ground he bade me fix my oar and make fit offerings to lord Neptune,—­a ram, a bull, and the sow’s mate, a boar,—­and, turning homeward, to offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods who hold the open sky, all in the order due.  And on myself death from the sea shall very gently come and cut me off, bowed down with hale old age.  Round me shall be a prosperous people.  All this, he said, should be fulfilled.”