As she spoke, Aphrodite moved a little ways and gave place, and Argathona saw the form and face of a beautiful, silent youth, and his countenance was grave and glorious, and Argathona beheld undazzled the splendor of the godhead of Eros. Eros spoke no word, but he lifted up his hands as if at once in blessing and command, and at that look and sign Argathona's heart seemed to melt within her and to need no other entreaties. But even then there loomed a mighty figure from the forest, making his way through the shining ranks of the divine, a shaggy, puck-nosed giant, with little horns sprouting from his forehead through his tangle of savage curls, and though he was made like a man-god he ran on goat shanks, and he held in his hand a strange pipe, framed of many pieces of reed of different measure bound together by withies. In his presence the other gods appeared to fade and show faint, and the power of the new-comer seemed to inform all the forest and to overshadow all the world. Pan spoke no word as he fixed his fierce, friendly eyes upon Argathona, but he set his thick lips to the rims of his reeds and blew down them, and his breath made such melody in their channels as Argathona ached with fear and longing to hear, and all the other gods stood spellbound. The piper piped of the red earth and the green grass and the blue sky and the yellow corn, of the straight passions and the simple pleasures of men, of love and pursuit and triumph, of hunger with meat a-nigh, of thirst with the wine-skin between the fingers, of sleep and waking, of jollity and horror, the mirth and the fear of things. He piped of the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep, the humming of bees and the buzzing of flies, the flowing of streams and the growing of flowers, the singing of shepherds and the dancing of the nymphs upon the green. He piped till his piping came to a burden, and the burden of his piping seemed to be, "Keep the Faith." Then all the Olympians cried out in chorus: "Wait, watch, keep the faith." And behind the circle of the greater gods all that populous multitude of the lesser gods took up the call and voiced it, ringing through the forest and filling the sky, and stretching to the ends of the world: "Watch, wait, keep the faith." And with that cry there arose again the sound of the beating of wings and the trampling of horses and the straining of sails and the wailing of great winds, and then in a breath the Olympians vanished, the vision faded, and Argathona awoke in the strong morning sunshine to find her lover looking down upon her. XXVIII LOVER AND LASS