Page:Sophocles (Collins).djvu/145

Rh has plunged the man whom she so faithfully loved into bodily torment such as she could not have devised even for her bitterest enemy. She is powerless to avert or to heal the sufferings which she has so unwittingly inflicted; and the voice of conscience within tells her that she can give but one real proof of her affection. It is the resolve which forms the refrain in the pathetic epistle which Ovid imagines her to have written to her husband—

And so, without answering her son, she leaves the stage, and soon her nurse comes to tell the maidens that all is over. After wandering restlessly from room to room, mourning for the evil fate which had come upon her, she had thrown herself upon the bed of Hercules, and there ended her sorrow by a mortal wound from his sword; and then Hyllus, learning her innocence too late, had embraced the insensate body, with idle tears and kisses.

As the Chorus are lamenting her cruel death, the tramp of approaching steps is heard, and Hyllus and some attendants are seen carrying a litter, on which the huge frame of Hercules lies stretched. The convulsive pains which had so cruelly tortured him are lulled for the moment, and he is plunged in a death-like stupor; but he is roused by his son's voice, and with consciousness his agony revives, and he groans aloud in his despair. "Will none, he asks, smite him with the