She seated herself on a couch by the table, and made me a sign to sit by her.
She poured me out a bowlful of milk, and, handing me the loaf, begged me to break from it such a piece as I liked.

Then she filled from the wine-jug two silver goblets of grotesquely graceful workmanship.
"You have never drunk wine like this!" she said.
I drank, and wondered: every flower of Hybla and Hymettus must have sent its ghost to swell the soul of that wine! "And now that you will be able to listen," she went on, "I must do what I can to make myself intelligible to you.

Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy.

Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I--we are but a few--live to live on.

Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection.