Page:Quiller-Couch - Noughts and Crosses.djvu/26

 "Fool—little fool! Will you be like all the commentators? Will you forget what Virgil has said and put your own nonsense into his golden mouth?"

He stepped across, picked up the book, found the passage, and then turning back a page or so, read out—

"Alte! Alte!" he screamed: "Dido sat on high: Æneas stood at the foot of her throne. Listen to this:—'Then Dido, bending down her gaze . . .'"

He went on translating. A rapture took him, and the sun beat in through the glass roof, and lit up his eyes. He was transfigured; his voice swelled and sank with passion, swelled again, and then, at the words—

it broke, the Virgil dropped from his hand, and sulking down on his stool he broke into a wild fit of sobbing.

"Oh, why did I read it? Why did I read this sorrowful book?" And then checking his