Without a backward look toward the drawer where the manuscript lay buried, Lucine gathered up note-book and fountain-pen and departed for the library. She walked slowly through the long apartment, glancing into alcove after alcove only to find every chair occupied on both sides of the polished tables that gleamed softly in the gaslight. Finally she discovered one of the small movable steps that were used when a girl wished to reach the highest shelf. Capturing it she carried it to the farther end of a narrow recess between two bookcases and doubled her angular length into a cozy heap for an evening with Shelley’s poem of “Prometheus Unbound.” That was to be the English lesson for the next day.
As she read verse after verse, the music of the wonderful lines soothed her restless mood, and the beauty of the thought that love and forgiveness are stronger than selfishness lifted her to a height of joyous exaltation. The idea of Prometheus suffering all agonies for the sake of men came to her like a revelation. While she pondered over it, suddenly like the shining of a great light she understood the truth of “he that loseth his soul shall find it.” The Christ-ideal of self-sacrifice meant the highest self-realization.
“My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over,” sang Lucine in her heart, as she read on and on. “I have been blind but now I see. It has been always true, always, always. My cup runneth over. Listen:
| “‘It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine, I wish no living thing to suffer pain.’” |
“Laura!” Lucine raised her head dreamily. She was unconscious of how the evening hours had drifted past, leaving only a few lingering students here and there in the library. She could not see the two girls bending over the table on the other side of the bookcase behind which she was nestling. But their voices floated mistily to her ears.
“Laura, remember that you have promised to live with my sister next year. Don’t let Lucine coax or frighten you out of it. You have promised.”
“But if I don’t come back?”
“Well, anyway you have promised to room with Harriet if you do. We’ll choose a parlor away off at the other end of the campus from Lucine, so that I can protect you from her demands. You’ve been growing thinner and whiter all the year. Now, remember. Don’t you give in to her selfishness. She is able to take care of her precious self without killing you in the process. Promise.”
Lucine heard a sigh. “I’ve promised to be her friend and I do care for her dearly; but I want with all my heart to room with Harriet, if I can manage to get back for next year. I’m almost sure I shan’t. Now, see here, does this verb come from vinco or vincio? I’m so sleepy I can’t read straight.”
Lucine very white about the lips was sitting erect in her corner. “My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over,” echoed faintly in her brain. “My cup runneth over and Laura likes her best and the essay is up-stairs and I wish no living thing to suffer pain—suffer pain. My cup runneth over. ‘Pain, pain ever, forever!’ I won’t, I won’t, I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! To sacrifice it all for her and then—and then to be forsaken!”