She could have fallen on her knees,
as in a Breton 'pardon' when the Host goes by.
CHAPTER XVI
The bustle of the arrival was over. The doctors had given their
orders, the nurses were at their posts for the night, and, under
morphia, Desmond was sleeping. In the shaded library there were only
hushed voices and movements. By the light of the one lamp, which was
screened from the bed, one saw dimly the fantastic shapes in the
glass cases which lined the walls--the little Tanagra figures with
their sun-hats and flowing dress--bronzes of Apollo or Hermes--a
bronze bull--an ibex--a cup wreathed with acanthus. And in the
shadow at the far end rose the great Nike. She seemed to be asking
what the white bed and the shrouded figure upon it might
mean--protesting that these were not her symbols, or a language that
she knew.
Yet at times, as the light varied, she seemed to take another
aspect. To Aubrey, sitting beside his brother, the Nike more than
once suggested the recollection of a broken Virgin hanging from a
fragment of a ruined church which he remembered on a bit of road
near Mametz, at which he had seen passing soldiers look stealthily
and long.
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