In the front of the cloud hung a rosy curtain of some delicate tissue, and behind this curtain was the rose-lit room in which the Muses were grouped. Clio was standing erect. She wore a long and ample robe; her figure was stately; her look was the look of a handsome, learned woman, who is on the brink of her thirtieth year. In one hand was an open roll of paper, on which gilt letters were blazoned. She was looking down upon the towers, and steeples, and house-tops of Cambridge, and on the slow river winding like a reluctant silver corkscrew through the beautiful meadows of Grantchester. Behind her, seven of her sisters, picturesquely grouped, reclined on a low divan at the farther end of the room. They all were beautiful in different ways. Their robes, snow-white and pearly-grey, golden and crimson and deep-sea blue, made a poem of colour. And on the mosaic floor, kneeling on one knee, bending over a little tripod that supported a brazier, was one who wore no robe, but the long night of her beautiful hair. Mockery was on her lips, but dreams were in her eyes. She seemed a young girl of seventeen. She was Erato, who sings to us of love. The picture of her in the classical dictionaries is absurdly wrong. Beside her on the floor lay her lyre and a curious golden casket. From the brazier a thin, wandering line of fragrant smoke came up, and hovered in the room. There was a moment’s silence. Then Clio turned round to her sisters. “We will stay here,” she said, “for a little while. This is Granta; and here are gathered young men who are truly gymnasts and yet follow the Muses. For they do all of them seek after culture, and love naught but the reading of many learned books, and the hearing of the wisdom of their teachers; and they all strive to lead the higher life.” Terpsichore gave a curious little cough. I have no certain idea what it meant; but it seemed to imply in some way that she had been there before. The grave and stately Clio never noticed it. “Yes, we will stay, and tell to one another improving stories,” she went on. “Cupid! Cupid!” she called. A curtain at the side of the room was flung aside, and in came a little winged boy, with laughing eyes, naked but for the quiver that hung from the shoulders. He does a good deal for the Muses, but not in a menial way. They all smiled when he came in. He stood by the side of Erato, who evidently petted him a good deal, drawing one strand of her dark hair through his little rosy fingers--but he was looking at Clio. “Cupid,” said the grave Muse, “we would stay here: let the wind blow our cloud no farther.” He nodded his head, turned to go, and then lingered, still playing with Erato’s hair. “Erato,” he whispered in her ear, “my bow-string is frayed. Let me make a bow-string of your hair.” “No--perhaps--not now. You wicked little boy!” she said, looking up in his face and laughing.