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——­”

Any one 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.

“Come in,” she said in a petulant voice.

The handle of the door was slowly turned, the tapestry curtain moved forward and a little fair-haired girl, with an infantile expression of face and looking years younger than her eighteen summers, tripped a few steps into the room.

“I beg your pardon, Maggie,” she said.  “I had not a moment to come sooner—­ not one really.  That stupid Miss Turner chose to raise the alarm for the fire brigade.  Of course I had to go, and I’ve only just come back and changed my dress.”

“You ought to be in bed, Rosalind; it’s past eleven o’clock.”

“Oh, as if that mattered!  I’ll go in a minute.  How cozy you look here.”

“My dear, I am not going to keep you out of your beauty sleep.  You can admire my room another time.  If you have a message for me, Rosalind, let me have it, and then—­ oh, cruel word, but I must say it, my love—­ Go!”

Rosalind Merton had serene baby-blue eyes; they looked up now full at Maggie.  Then her dimpled little hand slid swiftly into the pocket of her dress, came out again with a quick, little, frightened dart and deposited a square envelope with some manly writing on it on the bureau, where Maggie had been studying Prometheus Vinctus.  The letter covered the greater portion of the open page.  It seemed to Maggie as if the Greek play had suddenly faded and gone out of sight behind a curtain.