For, like Herakles, in his own _Alkestis_, he now strides away (and this is the true end of the _Alkestis_) to surmount all heights of destiny." While she spoke thus, the Chorus of the Comedy, girls, boys, and men, in drunken revel and led by Aristophanes, thundered at the door and claimed admittance. Balaustion is drawn confronting them--tall and superb, like Victory's self; her warm golden eyes flashing under her black hair, "earth flesh with sun fire," statuesque, searching the crowd with her glance. And one and all dissolve before her silent splendour of reproof, all save Aristophanes. She bids him welcome. "Glory to the Poet," she cries. "Light, light, I hail it everywhere; no matter for the murk, that never should have been such orb's associate." Aristophanes changes as he sees her; a new man confronts her. "So!" he smiled, "piercing to my thought at once, You see myself? Balaustion's fixed regard Can strip the proper Aristophanes Of what our sophists, in their jargon, style His accidents?" He confesses her power to meet him in discourse, unfolds his views and plans to her, and having contrasted himself with Euripides, bids her use her thrice-refined refinement, her rosy strength, to match his argument. She claims no equality with him, the consummate creator; but only, as a woman, the love of all things lovable with which to meet him who has degraded Comedy. She appeals to the high poet in the man, and finally bids him honour the deep humanity in Euripides. To prove it, and to win his accord, she reads the _Herakles_, the last of Euripides. It is this long night of talk which Balaustion dictates to Euthycles as she is sailing, day after day, from Athens back to Rhodes. The aspect of sea and sky, as they sail, is kept before us, for Balaustion uses its changes as illustrations, and the clear descriptions tell, even more fully than before, how quick this woman was to observe natural beauty and to correlate it with humanity. Here is one example. In order to describe a change in the temper of Aristophanes from wild license to momentary gravity, Balaustion seizes on a cloud-incident of the voyage--Euthycles, she cries, ... "o'er the boat side, quick, what change, Watch--in the water! But a second since, It laughed a ripply spread of sun and sea, Ray fused with wave, to never disunite. Now, sudden, all the surface hard and black, Lies a quenched light, dead motion: what the cause? Look up, and lo, the menace of a cloud Has solemnised the sparkling, spoiled the sport! Just so, some overshadow, some new care Stopped all the mirth and mocking on his face." Her feeling for nature is as strong us her feeling for man, and both are woven together.