the nearest tree-trunk, she could not have been stricken more
breathless than she was by the compact, embattled solitude that
encompassed her. The hopelessness of impressing these cold and passive
vaults with her selfish passion filled her with a vague fear. In her
rage of the previous night she had not seen the wood in its profound
immobility. Left alone with the majesty of those enormous columns, she
trembled and turned faint. The silence of the hollow tree she had just
quitted seemed to her less awful than the crushing presence of these
mute and monstrous witnesses of her weakness. Like a wounded quail with
lowered crest and trailing wing, she crept back to her hiding-place.
Even then the influence of the wood was still upon her. She picked up
the novel she had contemptuously thrown aside only to let it fall again
in utter weariness. For a moment her feminine curiosity was excited by
the discovery of an old book, in whose blank leaves were pressed a
variety of flowers and woodland grasses. As she could not conceive that
these had been kept for any but a sentimental purpose, she was
disappointed to find that underneath each was a sentence in an unknown
tongue, that even to her untutored eye did not appear to be the
language of passion. Finally she rearranged the couch of skins and
blankets, and, imparting to it in three clever shakes an entirely
different character, lay down to pursue her reveries. But nature
asserted herself, and ere she knew it she was fast asleep.
So intense and prolonged had been her previous excitement that, the
tension once relieved, she passed into a slumber of exhaustion so deep
that she seemed scarce to breathe. High noon succeeded morning, the
central shaft received a single ray of upper sunlight, the afternoon
came and went, the shadows gathered below, the sunset fires began to
eat their way through the groined roof, and she still slept. She slept
even when the bark hangings of the chamber were put aside, and the
young man reentered.
He laid down a bundle he was carrying, and softly approached the
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