Already those little
disappointments which are as the shadow beside all conscious
enjoyment, were no petty things to her, but had for her their pathos,
as children's troubles will have, in spite of the longer chance
before them. They were as the first steps in a long story of
deferred hopes, or anticipations of death itself and the end of them.
The gift of Ares gone, the mystic girdle she would fain have
transferred to the child, that bloody god of storm and battle,
hereditary patron of her house, faded from her thoughts together with
the memory of her past life--the more completely, because another
familiar though somewhat forbidding deity, accepting certainly a
cruel and forbidding worship, was already in possession, and reigning
in the new home when she came thither. Only, thanks to some kindly
local influence (by grace, say, of its delicate air), Artemis, this
other god she had known in the Scythian wilds, had put aside her
fierce ways, as she paused awhile on her heavenly course among these
ancient abodes of men, gliding softly, mainly through their dreams,
with abundance of salutary touches. Full, in truth, of [167]
grateful memory of some timely service at human hands! In these
highland villages the tradition of celestial visitants clung fondly,
of god or hero, belated or misled on long journeys, yet pleased to be
among the sons of men, as their way led them up the steep, narrow,
crooked street, condescending to rest a little, as one, under some
sudden stress not clearly ascertained, had done here, in this very
house, thereafter for ever sacred.
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