He, at least, was off after
the first line, sailing golden seas remote and glorious, places where
words were lovely and deeds heroic, places most beautiful and brave,
most admirably, most restfully unlike Creeper Cottage. He rolled out
the sentences, turning them on his tongue, savouring them, reluctant
to let them go. She sat looking at him, wondering how he could
possibly even for an instant forget the actual and the present.
"'Xerxes went forth, Xerxes perished, Xerxes mismanaged all things in
the depths of the sea--'" declaimed Fritzing.
"He must have been like us," murmured Priscilla.
"'O for Darius the scatheless, the protector! No woman ever mourned
for deed of his--'"
"What a nice man," sighed Priscilla. "'O for Darius!'"
"Ma'am, if you interrupt how can I read? And it is a most beautiful
passage."
"But we do want a Darius badly," moaned Priscilla.
"'The ships went forth, the grey-faced ships, like to each other as
bird is to bird, the ships and all they carried perished, the ships
perished by the hand of the Greeks. The king, 'tis said, escapes, but
hardly, by the plains of Thrace and the toilsome ways, and behind him
he leaves his first-fruits--sailors unburied on the shores of Salamis.
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