At home, or hear his safety well assured,
To clothe him with this tunic, and send forth
The glorious worshipper in glorious robe."—(P.)
But hardly has Lichas departed, carrying with him the fatal gift, than Dejanira enters again in an agony of alarm. She had, according to the Centaur's instructions, kept the blood in a bronze vessel "untouched by foe or sunlight"—even when she smeared it on the robe, it had been in a dark chamber within the house; but she had thrown the wisp of wool which she had used for the purpose on the ground in the sunshine. There it had melted and crumbled into dust in a strange fashion—
"And from the earth where it had lain, there oozed
Thick clots of foam, as when in vintage bright
Rich must is poured upon the earth from vine
Sacred to Bacchus; and I know not now
Which way of thought to turn, but see too well
That I have done a deed most perilous."—(P.)
Why, she reasons, should the Centaur have wished her well? No—the philtre must have been given with a purpose, and her husband will die of that "black poison" in which his own arrows have been steeped.
And at that moment Hyllus rushes in, and charges her with being his father's murderess. He has just come from witnessing the agony which had convulsed Hercules in the midst of his triumphal sacrifice to Jove. The blaze of fire from the altar had excited the latent and deadly power of the venom in which the robe had been steeped; maddened with pain, the hero had seized on Lichas, the unlucky bringer of the pre-
