By and by repose took the place of tension-- her face looked as if it
were cut out of marble. The excitement and unrest, which her words had
betrayed, vanished utterly; her features were beautiful, but almost
expressionless.
This lasted for a short time, perhaps ten minutes; then a trivial
circumstance, the falling of a coal in the grate, disturbed the light
slumber of the sleeper. Maggie stirred restlessly and turned her head.
She was not awake, but she was dreaming. A faint rose tint visited
each cheek, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over
the other. Presently tears stole from under the black eyelashes and
rolled down her cheeks. She opened her eyes wide; she was awake again;
unutterable regret, remorse, which might never be quieted, filled her
face.
Maggie rose from her chair, and, going across the room, sat down at
her bureau. She turned a shaded lamp, so that the light might fall
upon the pages of a book she was studying, and, pushing her hands
through her thick hair, she began to read a passage from the splendid
Prometheus Vinctus of AEschylus:
"O divine ether, O swift-winged winds!"
She muttered the opening lines to herself, then turning the page began
to translate from the Greek with great ease and fluency:
"O divine ether, and swift-winged winds,
O flowing rivers, and ocean with countless-dimpling
smile,
Earth, mother of all, and the all-seeing circle of the
sun, to you I call;
Behold me, and the things that I, a god, suffer at the
hands of gods.
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