And now the chance had come, _now_, when everything in the world was upside down; when a sick mother and a forlorn household needed her; when an empty kitchen called her; and when a pair of hands, awkward though they were, meant as much to her family as a brilliant brain meant to her college. Barbara closed her eyes, and tried to think.
David, in the next room, had taken up his reading again, at the Isle of the Sirens:—
“And all things stayed around and listened; the gulls sat in white lines along the rocks; on the beach great seals lay basking and kept time with lazy heads; while silver shoals of fish came up to hearken, and whispered as they broke the shining calm. The wind overhead hushed his whistling as he shepherded his clouds toward the west; and the clouds stood in mid-blue, and listened dreaming, like a flock of golden sheep.
“And as the heroes listened, the oars fell from their hands and their heads drooped on their breasts, and they closed their heavy eyes; and they dreamed of bright, still gardens, and of slumbers under murmuring pines, till all of their toil seemed foolishness, and they thought of their renown no more.”
[Illustration: BARBARA SANK DOWN WEARILY]
“I’ve been asleep,” thought Barbara, bitterly, “asleep and dreaming.”
“Then Medea clapped her hands together, and cried, ‘Sing louder, Orpheus; sing a bolder strain; wake up these hapless sluggards, or none of them will see the land of Hellas more.’
“Then Orpheus lifted his harp, and crashed his cunning hand across the strings, and his music and his voice rang like a trumpet through the still evening air: into the air it rushed like thunder, till the rocks rang, and the sea, and into their souls it rushed like wine, till all hearts beat fast within their breasts.”
“Every dream I had at college—every hope, every aspiration—has gone,” interrupted Barbara’s thoughts. “Surely I left school with plenty of ambition. But here I am, a drudge of a housekeeper, and a poor one at that! I can’t even cook a meal or iron a waist. And I haven’t the chance to do anything else, with mother sick. Oh, I would like to! I would, I would! Because this is my last opportunity. If I don’t take this, _I_ shall never, never, see the land of Hellas more.”