METAMORPHOSES BOOK VI While Procne was thus speaking Itys came into his mother's presence. His coming suggested what she could do, and regarding him with pitiless eyes, she said: «Ah, how like your father vou are!" Saying no more, she began to plan a terrible deed an boiled with inward rage. Butwhen the boy came up to her and greeted his mother, put his little arms around er neck and kissed her in his winsome, boyish way, her mother-heart was touched, her wrath fell awa and her eyes, though all unwilling, were wet with tears that flowed in spite of her. But when she perceived that her purpose was wavering through of mother-love, she turned again from her son excess to her sister; and gazing at both in turn, she said:Why is one able to make soft, pretty speeches, while her ravished tongue dooms the other to silence ? Since he calls me mother, why does she not call me sister? Remember whose wife vou are, daughter of Pandion! Will you be faithless to vour husband? But taithfulness to such a husband as Tereus is a crie." Without more words she dragged Itys away, as a tigress drags a suckling fawn through the dark woods on Ganges' banks. And when they reached a remote part of the great house, while the boy stretched out pleading hands as he saw his fate, and screamed, "Mother! mother! and sought to throw his arms around her neck, Procne smote him with a knife between breast and side--an with no change of face. This one stroke sufficed to slay the laa; but rhilomela cut the throat also, and they cut up the body still warm and quivering with life. Part bubbles in brazen kettles, part sputters on while the whole room drips with gore spits; This is the feast to which the wife invites Tereus, ittle knowing what it is. She pretends that it is s
