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The exertions of the march had begun to tell. The enemy's attacks had been fiercely pressed, and before the pressure of his fresh brigades the Confederate power of resistance was strained to breaking-point. Garnett had behaved with conspicuous gallantry. The officers of his brigade declared that he was perfectly justified in ordering a retreat.
Between Cassandra and the Chorus it is a duet of anguish and fear; in the broken lyric phrases a phantom music wails; till at last, at what seems the breaking-point, the tension is relaxed, and dropping into the calmer iambic recitative, Cassandra tells her message in plainer speech and clearly proclaims the murder of the King.
Yet with all the lack of the modern necessities of life, human nature was still much the same. The antagonism between rich and poor, which the collapse of feudal relations had strained to breaking-point, was not perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak, even in that age.
"Don't listen to her," he ended, hoarsely; "she doesn't know what she is talking about!" "But, David, that was what I said. I said it would be bad for you; she says it will ruin you " "It is a lie!" he said. It was nearly three o'clock. They were all at the breaking-point of anger and terror. "Elizabeth," Helena Richie implored, "if you love him, are you willing to destroy him?
Vaguely, as of a sound coming from far distances, the crack of a revolver-shot penetrated to the girl's numbed brain. It did not surprise her. Indeed, it roused only a feeling of the mildest curiosity in one whose nerves had been strained almost to the breaking-point.
"It's going to kill us this time," declared little Robey, the youngest subaltern, to whom the nights were a torment unspeakable. He had been within an ace of heat apoplexy more than once, and his nerves were stretched almost to breaking-point. But Merryon went doggedly on, hewing his unswerving way through all.
And any who may have tried walking five or six miles by night in heavy rain to an unknown destination along some of the roads east of Albert, will bear out that it is a wearisome performance. When to these facts is added the further information that the age of the boy was only eighteen, it will be conceded that the breaking-point was not far off.
And the moonlight came into Maisie's soul, so that she, usually reserved, chattered of herself and of the things she took interest in, of Kami, wisest of teachers, and of the girls in the studio, of the Poles, who will kill themselves with overwork if they are not checked; of the French, who talk at great length of much more than they will ever accomplish; of the slovenly English, who toil hopelessly and cannot understand that inclination does not imply power; of the Americans, whose rasping voices in the hush of a hot afternoon strain tense-drawn nerves to breaking-point, and whose suppers lead to indigestion; of tempestuous Russians, neither to hold nor to bind, who tell the girls ghost-stories till the girls shriek; of stolid Germans, who come to learn one thing, and, having mastered that much, stolidly go away and copy pictures for evermore.
Always, however, at the breaking-point came a word of cheer a note of approval. Bishop Lines of Newark, New Jersey, who was then Rector of St. Paul's church, sent me a note, that reached me in a dark hour.
"Someone must change her clothes and give her a bath!" "You can't?" Coombe said. "I!" dropping her handkerchief. "How how CAN I?" "I don't know," he answered and picked up the handkerchief with an aloof grace of manner. It was really Robin who was for Feather the breaking-point. He thought she was in danger of flinging herself upon him again.
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