“’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.  Then grieve, sting yourselves to grief, make heaven echo, howl like dogs for the horror, for they are battered together by the terrible waters, they are shredded to pieces by the voiceless children of the Pure.  The house has no master—­’”

“Fritzi, I wish you’d leave off,” implored Priscilla.  “It’s quite as gloomy as anything I was thinking.”

“But ma’am the difference is that it is also beautiful, whereas the gloom at present enveloping us is mere squalor.  ’The voiceless children of the Pure—­’ how is that, ma’am, for beauty?”

“I don’t even know what it means,” sighed Priscilla.

“Ma’am, it is an extremely beautiful manner of alluding to fish.”

“I don’t care,” said Priscilla.

“Ma’am, is it possible that the blight of passing and outward circumstance has penetrated to and settled upon what should always be of a sublime inaccessibility, your soul?”

“I don’t care about the fish,” repeated Priscilla listlessly.  Then with a sudden movement she pushed back her chair and jumped up.  “Oh,” she cried, beating her hands together, “don’t talk to me of fish when I can’t see an inch—­oh not a single inch into the future!”

Fritzing looked at her, his finger on the page.  Half of him was still at the bottom of classic seas with the battered and shredded sailors.  How much rather would he have stayed there, have gone on reading AEschylus a little, have taken her with him for a brief space of serenity into that moist refuge from the harassed present, have forgotten at least for one morning the necessity, the dreariness of being forced to face things, to talk over, to decide.  Besides, what could he decide?  The unhappy man had no idea.  Nor had Priscilla.  To stay in Symford seemed impossible, but to leave it seemed still more so.  And sooner than go back disgraced to Kunitz and fling herself at paternal feet which would in all probability immediately spurn her, Priscilla felt she would die.  But how could she stay in Symford, surrounded by angry neighbours, next door to Tussie, with Robin coming back for vacations, with Mrs. Morrison hating her, with Lady Shuttleworth hating her, with Emma’s father hating her, with the blood of Mrs. Jones on her head?  Could one live peacefully in such an accursed place?  Yet how could they go away?  Even if they were able to compose their nerves sufficiently to make new plans they could not go because they were in debt.