_Epicurus._ We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love. Passion weeps while she says, 'I did not deserve this from him'; Reason, while she says it, smoothens her brow at the clear fountain of the heart. Permit me also, like Theophrastus, to borrow a few words from a poet. _Ternissa._ Borrow as many such as any one will entrust to you, and may Hermes prosper your commerce! Leontion may go to the theatre then; for she loves it. _Epicurus._ Girls! be the bosom friends of Antigone and Ismene; and you shall enter the wood of the Eumenides without shuddering, and leave it without the trace of a tear. Never did you appear so graceful to me, O Ternissa--no, not even after this walk do you--as when I saw you blow a fly from the forehead of Philoctetes in the propylea. The wing, with which Sophocles and the statuary represent him, to drive away the summer insects in his agony, had wearied his flaccid arm, hanging down beside him. _Ternissa._ Do you imagine, then, I thought him a living man? _Epicurus._ The sentiment was both more delicate and more august from being indistinct. You would have done it, even if he _had_ been a living man; even if he could have clasped you in his arms, imploring the deities to resemble you in gentleness, you would have done it. _Ternissa._ He looked so abandoned by all, and so heroic, yet so feeble and so helpless! I did not think of turning around to see if any one was near me; or else, perhaps---- _Epicurus._ If you could have thought of looking around, you would no longer have been Ternissa. The gods would have transformed you for it into some tree. _Leontion._ And Epicurus had been walking under it this day, perhaps. _Epicurus._ With Leontion, the partner of his sentiments. But the walk would have been earlier or later than the present hour; since the middle of the day, like the middle of certain fruits, is good for nothing. _Leontion._ For dinner, surely? _Epicurus._ Dinner is a less gratification to me than to many: I dine alone. _Ternissa._ Why? _Epicurus._ To avoid the noise, the heat, and the intermixture both of odours and of occupations. I cannot bear the indecency of speaking with a mouth in which there is food. I careen my body (since it is always in want of repair) in as unobstructed a space as I can, and I lie down and sleep awhile when the work is over. _Leontion._ Epicurus! although it would be very interesting, no doubt, to hear more of what you do after dinner--[_Aside to him._] now don't smile: I shall never forgive you if you say a single word--yet I would rather hear a little about the theatre, and whether you think at last that women should frequent it; for you have often said the contrary.