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 her, laid his hand
on her shoulder, and said, "Dearest." His voice was supplicating. But
she shut her face away from him, as much as to say, "You can't possibly
understand."

As he did not leave her, however, she had to wipe her eyes, and to raise
them to the level of the factory chimneys on the other bank. She saw
also the arches of Waterloo Bridge and the carts moving across them,
like the line of animals in a shooting gallery. They were seen blankly,
but to see anything was of course to end her weeping and begin to walk.