face from the curious. Mr. Ambrose attempted consolation;
he patted her shoulder; but she showed no signs of admitting him, and
feeling it awkward to stand beside a grief that was greater than his, he
crossed his arms behind him, and took a turn along the pavement.

The embankment juts out in angles here and there, like pulpits; instead
of preachers, however, small boys occupy them, dangling string, dropping
pebbles, or launching wads of paper for a cruise. With their sharp eye
for eccentricity, they were inclined to think Mr. Ambrose awful; but
the quickest witted cried "Bluebeard!" as he passed. In case they should
proceed to tease his wife, Mr. Ambrose flourished his stick at them,
upon which they decided that he was grotesque merely, and four instead
of one cried "Bluebeard!" in chorus.

Although Mrs. Ambrose stood quite still, much longer than is natural,
the little boys let her be. Some one is always looking into the river
near Waterloo Bridge; a couple will stand there talking for half an hour
on a fine afternoon; most people, walking for pleasure, contemplate for
three minutes; when, having compared the occasion with other occasions,
or made some sentence, they pass on. Sometimes the flats and churches
and hotels of Westminster are like the outlines of Constantinople in a
mist; sometimes the river is an opulent purple, sometimes mud-coloured,
sometimes sparkling blue like the sea. It is always worth while to look
down and see what is happening. But this lady looked neither up nor
down; the only thing she had seen, since she stood there, was a circular
iridescent patch slowly floating past with a straw in the middle of it.
The straw and the patch swam again and again behind the tremulous medium
of a great welling tear, and the tear rose and fell and dropped into the
river. Then there struck close upon her ears--

Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the nine Gods he swore--

and then more faintly, as if the speaker had passed her on his walk--

That the Great House of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.

Yes, she knew she must go back to all that, but at present she must
weep. Screening her face she sobbed more steadily than she had yet done,
her shoulders rising and falling with great regularity. It was this
figure that her husband saw when, having reached the polished Sphinx,
having entangled himself with a man selling picture postcards, he
turned; the stanza instantly stopped. He came up to he