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66 still Admetus, the one indelicate and the other selfish; and between them they make it impossible to contemplate the situation, whatever elements of pathos it may contain, as anything out of the common, and impossible to believe that the author, if he knew what he was doing, is preparing us to accept it as an answer to the deepest of human questionings.

After a final altercation, ingenious and striking as a stage-device, but not otherwise affecting the posture and colour of the facts, Admetus consents to give his hand to his future inmate, and is persuaded to look her in the face. At last then the truth is out, the awful, thrilling, soul-penetrating truth. The king and his friends know now, that they have before them a mortal who has passed from death into life, and the heaven-born saviour who has brought her through. Here then, if faith or hope in the author's sympathy with his subject has survived in us under the shocks which he has given, we wait for our satisfaction; we wait to hear from Heracles the account of his tremendous experience, and from the others the outpouring of their belief and thankfulness. I will give in words of my own, as exactly as I can, the whole of what is said from this point to the end.