The
woe-wasted wife, comprehending what it meant, as she chiefly, from the dark
depths of her own spotted consciousness, _could_ comprehend, had yet flung
her fear aside for the sake of him whom she loved with a love so
bitter-costly, and now she stood at his side, fiercely clutching him, and
taunting him like a tigress with his unmanly fears. Ah, had that clutch
upon his elbow been the searing grasp of white-heated pincers, eating to
the bone, it had not stirred _him_. He stood there, a tall, large-limbed
man, brown and weather-stained, one who had endured much, wrinkled
somewhat, care-marked about the brow, but very capable, and evidently as
bold and daring, to the line, as he asserted himself,--he stood there,
flung back, fixed, petrified, as it were, by the baleful judgment that
lighted those unearthly eyes which watched him from across the table there;
and though his arm be flung up over his face, half to protect, half in
menace,--though his fist be clenched and swollen, his brow dark and
frowning, we know he will not spring forward, but will stand there still,
no life in all that mass of muscle, no will-power in that capable brain,
nought but impotent malignity in that murderous frown: for he is
stricken,--his sin has found him out,--ay, at the very altar, Orestes hears
the Furies shriek their hatred in his ears, exultingly proclaiming that for
him at least there is no rest, nor ever shall be!
Such was the impression of Clarian's Picture, and I felt my blood fairly
tingle with recognition of the boy's power.
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