Maggie curled herself up in her luxurious chair, arranged a soft pillow under her head, and shut her eyes. In this attitude she made a charming picture: her thick, black lashes lay heavily on her pale cheeks; her red lips were slightly parted; her breathing came quietly. 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 check, and she clenched one hand, then moved it, and laid it over the other. Presently tears stoic 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.
Behold the wrongs with which I am worn away, and which I shall suffer
through endless time.
Such is the shameful bondage which the new ruler of the Blessed Ones has
invented for me.
Alas! Alas! I bewail my present and future misery—”
Anyone who had seen Maggie in her deep and expressionless sleep but a few minutes before would have watched her now with a sensation of surprise. This queer girl was showing another phase of her complex nature. Her face was no longer lacking in expression, no longer stricken with sorrow, nor harrowed with unavailing regret. A fine fire filled her eyes; her brow, as she pushed back her hair, showed its rather massive proportions. Now, intellect and the triumphant delight of overcoming a mental difficulty reigned supreme in her face. She read on without interruption for nearly an hour. At the end of that time her cheeks were burning like two glowing crimson roses.
A knock came at her door; she started and turned round petulantly.
“It’s just my luck,” muttered Maggie. “I’d have got the sense of that whole magnificent passage in another hour. It was beginning to fill me: I was getting satisfied—now it’s all over! I’d have had a good night if that knock hadn’t come—but now—now I am Maggie Oliphant, the most miserable girl at St. Benet’s, once again.”
The knock was repeated. Miss Oliphant sprang to her feet.