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.
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