It is always worth while to look 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.