Let him die in his ordeal, if it is his fate to die in that field. For how could I hide it from my parents, if I prepare the drugs? What story would I tell? What trick, what crafty plan could help him? Shall I meet him alone, away from his friends? Unhappy me. I do not hope to be free of grief even if he dies; when he loses his life, that is when the evil will come to me.

She tries to let him go. "Let him die" is the order she gave herself once before, Mooney notes, using the same word for Jason at line 466. Then the practical questions crowd in, the questions of a girl in her father's house: how to hide the drugs from her parents, what story to tell, whether she can see him alone. The last lines admit what the first denied. If he dies, her grief does not end; it begins. Mooney notes that ἐπίκλοπος, "crafty," describes only people in Homer; here it describes a plan.