He saw clearly only now and then. At other times the picture quivered
dimly, through the veil of green reflections upon their movements. In the
room it must have been very still, and Plattner says the candle flame
streamed up into a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears each
footfall and its echoes beat like a clap of thunder. And the faces!
Two, more particularly near the woman's: one a woman's also, white and
clear-featured, a face which might have once been cold and hard, but which
was now softened by the touch of a wisdom strange to earth. The other
might have been the woman's father. Both were evidently absorbed in the
contemplation of some act of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which they
could no longer guard against and prevent. Behind were others, teachers,
it may be, who had taught ill, friends whose influence had failed. And
over the man, too--a multitude, but none that seemed to be parents or
teachers! Faces that might once have been coarse, now purged to strength
by sorrow! And in the forefront one face, a girlish one, neither angry nor
remorseful, but merely patient and weary, and, as it seemed to Plattner,
waiting for relief.
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