FOOTNOTES:

"Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"

—but not long can she be merely curious; every minute there breaks out a cry:

"He is with her, and they know that I knowWhere they are, what they do . . ."

—the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps through lovers in their bliss. They could not forgetme, she thinks, as all her sister-sufferers think. . . . Yet even in this hell, there is some solace. They must be remembering her, and

". . . they believe my tears flowWhile they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drearEmpty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here."

Yes, here—where the old man works for her: grinding, moistening, and mashing his paste, pounding at his powder. It is better to sit here and watch him than go dance at the King's; and she looks round in her restless, nervous anguish—the dagger in her heart, but this way,thisway, to stanch the wound it makes!

"That in the mortar—you call it a gum?Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,Sure to taste sweetly—is that poison too?"

But, maddened by the deadlier drug of wretchedness, she loses for a moment the single vision of her rival: it were good to haveallthe old man's treasures, for the joy of dealing death around her at that hateful Court where each knows of her misery.

"To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!"

She need but give a lozenge "at the King's," and Pauline should die in half an hour; or light a pastille, and Elise, "with her head and her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead." . . . But he is taking too long.

"Quick—is it finished? The colour's too grim!Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?"

For if it were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the old man knows—this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to the vessel again, a new doubt assails her.

"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me—That's why she ensnared him: this never will freeThe soul from those masculine eyes—say, 'No!'To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.For only last night, as they whispered, I broughtMy own eyes to bear on her so, that I thoughtCould I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!"* * * * *

"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me—That's why she ensnared him: this never will freeThe soul from those masculine eyes—say, 'No!'To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

For only last night, as they whispered, I broughtMy own eyes to bear on her so, that I thoughtCould I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!"

* * * * *

But it is not painless in its working? She does not desire that: she wants the other tofeeldeath; more—she wants the proof of death to remain,

"Brand, burn up, bite into its grace[236:1]—He is sure to remember her dying face!"

Is it done? Then he must take off her mask; he must—nay, he need not look morose about it:

"It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close."

She is not afraid to dispense with the protecting vizor:

"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?"

There it lies—there. . . .

"Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,You may kiss me, old man, on the mouth if you will!"

—and, looking her last look round the den, she prepares to go; but what is that mark on her gorgeous gown? Brush it off! Brush off that dust! It might bring horror down on her in an instant, before she knows or thinks, and she is going straight from here to dance at the King's. . . . She is gone, with her jealousy and her anguish and her passion, and, clutched to her heart, the phial that shall end but one of those torments.

She is gone, and she remains for ever. Her age is past, but not the hearts that ached in it. We curb those hearts to-day; we do not poison now; but have we forgotten the mood for poisoning?

"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?"

Such fiercenesses are silenced now; but, silent, they have still their utterance, and it is here.

Nay—here we have the heart unsilenced yet unfierce, the gentle, not the "dreadful," heart of woman: as true to type, so true indeed that we can even figure to ourselves the other hours in which the lady ofThe Laboratorymay have known, likethe girl here, only dim, aching wonder at her lover's mutability.

"Was it something said,Something done,Vexed him? was it touch of hand,Turn of head?Strange! that very wayLove begun:I as little understandLove's decay."[238:1]

Here, again, is full authenticity. Girl-like, she sits and broods upon it all—not angry, not even wholly wretched, for, though now she is abandoned, she has not loved "in vain," since she loved greatly. So greatly that still, still, she can dream:

"Would he loved me yet,On and on,While I found some way undreamed—Paid my debt!Gave more life and more,Till, all gone,He should smile, 'She never seemedMine before.'"

But this will not be; in a year it is over for him; and for her "over" too, though not yet ended. How will it end for her?

"Well, this cold clay clodWas man's heart:Crumble it, and what comes next?Is it God ?" . . .

The dream, the silly dream, of each forsaken child!

"'Dying for my sake—White and pink!Can't we touch these bubbles thenBut they break?'"

That is what he will say to himself, in his high male fashion, when he hears that she is dead; she sits and dreams of it, as women have done since the world began, and will do till it ends.[239:1]

Then, at last, he will know how she loved him; since, for all that has been between them, clearly he has not known that yet. . . . Again, the supreme conviction of our souls that who does know trulyallthe love, can never turn away from it. Most pitiful, most deceived, of dreams—yet after all, perhaps the horn-gate dream, for who knows "truly" but who loves truly?

Yet indeed (she now muses)hasshe enough loved him?

"I had wealth and ease,Beauty, youth:Since my lover gave me love,I gave these.That was all I meant—To be just,And the passion I had raisedTo content.Since he chose to changeGold for dust,If I gave him what he praised,Was it strange?"

"I had wealth and ease,Beauty, youth:Since my lover gave me love,I gave these.

That was all I meant—To be just,And the passion I had raisedTo content.Since he chose to changeGold for dust,If I gave him what he praised,Was it strange?"

And after all it was not enough! "Justice" was not enough, the giving of herself was not enough. If she could try again, if she could find that "way undreamed" to pay her debt. . . .

I should like to omit two lines from the second of the stanzas quoted above:

"And the passion I had raisedTo content."

From Browning, those words come oddly: moreover, elsewhere the girl cries:

"I, too, at love's brimTouched the sweet:I would die if death bequeathedSweet to him."

This is more than to "content" the "passion she had raised." Let us regard that phrase as unwritten: it is not authentic, it does not express either the girl or her poet.

The rest comes right and true—and more than all, perhaps, the second verse, where the mystery of passion in its coming no less than in its going is so subtly indicated.

"Strange! that very wayLove begun:Ias little understandLove's decay."

We hear to-day of love that aims at reason. Love forbid that I should say love knows not reason—but love and God forbid that it shouldaimat reason! Leave us that unwisdom at least: we are so wise to-day.

This ardent, gentle girl must suffer, and will suffer long—but will not die. She will live and she will grow. Shall she then look back with scorn upon that earlier self? . . . We talk much now of "re-incarnation," and always by our talk we seem to mean the coming-back to earth of a spirit which at some time has left it. But are there not re-incarnations of the still embodied spirit—is not re-incarnation, like eternity, with us here and now, as we "in this body" live and suffer and despair, and lift our hearts again to hope and faith? How many of us—grown, not changed—can pityingly look back at ourselves in some such dying moment as this poem shows us; for death it is to that "ourself." Hearts do not break, but hearts do die—thatheart,thatself: we pass into a Hades.

"Well, this cold clay clodWas man's heart:Crumble it, and what comes next?Is it God?"

Or is it new heart, new self, new life? We come forth enfranchised from our Hades. The evil days, the cruel days—we call them back (a little, it may be, ashamed of our escape!) and still the blest remoteness will endure: it was wonderful how it could suffer, the poor heart. . . . Surely this is re-incarnation; surely no returning spirit witnesses more clearly to a transition-state? Wehave beendead; but this "us" who comes back to the world we knew is still the same—the heart will answer as it once could answer, the spirit thrill as once it thrilled. Only—this is the proof—both heart and spirit arefurther on; both have, as it were, gone past the earlier summons and the earlier sense of love; and so, evoking such an hour as this, when we could dream of "dying for his sake, white and pink," we smile in tender, not in scornful, pity—knowing now that "way undreamed" of our girl's dream, and knowing that that way is not to die, but live and grow, since love that changes "in a year" is not the love to die, or live, for.

[224:1]The descriptive phrase above might really, at a pinch, be applied to Annabella Milbanke.

[236:1]Note the fierceness achieved by the shortening and the alliteration in this line.

[238:1]Mark how the deferred rhymes paint the groping thoughts. Only after much questioning can the answer come, as it were, in the "chime of the rhyme."

[239:1]And men also, I hasten to add, that there may be no pluming of male feathers—if indeed this be an occasion for pluming on either side.

The Wife

They are married, and they have come to a spiritual crisis. She does not, cannot, think ashethinks. But does thinking signify? She loves—is not that enough? Can she not have done with thinking, or at all events with talking about thinking? Perhaps, with every striving, she shall achieve no more than that: tosaynothing, to use no influence, to yield the sanctioned woman's trophy of the "last word." . . . Shall she, then, be yielding aught of value, if she contends no more?

"What so wild as words are?"

—and thattheyshould strive and argue! Why, it is as when birds debate about some tiny marvel of those marvellous tiny lives, while the hawk spies from a bough above.

"See the creature stalkingWhile we speak!Hush and hide the talking,Cheek on cheek!"

For that hawk is ever watching life: it stands for the mysterious effluence which falls on joy and killsit; and that may just as well be "talking" as aught else! He shall have his own way—or no: that is a paltry yielding. There shallbeno way but his.

"What so false as truth is,False to thee?"

She abandons then the cold abstraction; she does not even wish to "know":

"Where the apple reddensNever pry—Lest we lose our Edens,Eve and I.Be a god and hold meWith a charm!Be a man and fold meWith thine arm!Teach me, only teach, Love!As I oughtI will speak thy speech, Love,Think thy thought—Meet, if thou require it,Both demands,Laying flesh and spiritIn thy hands."* * * * *

"Where the apple reddensNever pry—Lest we lose our Edens,Eve and I.

Be a god and hold meWith a charm!Be a man and fold meWith thine arm!

Teach me, only teach, Love!As I oughtI will speak thy speech, Love,Think thy thought—

Meet, if thou require it,Both demands,Laying flesh and spiritIn thy hands."

* * * * *

But even as she measures and exults in the abjection of herself, a voice whispers in her soul that this is not the way. Something is wrong. She hears, but cannot heed. It must be so, since he desires it—since he can desire it. Since hecan. . .

"That shall be to-morrow,Not to-night:I must bury sorrowOut of sight:—Must a little weep, Love,(Foolish me!)And so fall asleep, Love,Loved by thee."

"That shall be to-morrow,Not to-night:I must bury sorrowOut of sight:

—Must a little weep, Love,(Foolish me!)And so fall asleep, Love,Loved by thee."

He does not wish to know the real Herself. Then the real herself shall "sleep"; all shall be as before.

Will this endure? All depends upon the woman: upon how strongsheis. For is not this the sheer denial of her husband's moral force? By her silence, her abjection, her suppression, he shall prevail: not otherwise. And so,ifthis endure, what shall the issue prove? Not the highest good of married life for either, and still less for the man than for the woman.

By implication, Browning shows us that inBy the Fireside, one of his three great songs of wedded love:

"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,Your heart anticipate my heart,You must be just before, in fine,See and make me see, for your part,New depths of the divine!"

Once more we can trace there his development fromPauline. She, looking up "as I might kill her and be loved the more," had, to the lover's thinking, laid her flesh and spirit in his hands, precisely as the wifein theLast Wordresolves to do. . . . As the poet grew, so grew the man in Browning: we reachBy the Firesidefrom these. For the woman in theLast Word, strong to lay aside herself, to "think his thought," could with that strength, used otherwise, bringthathusband to the place where stands the man inBy the Fireside, when the "long dark autumn evenings" are come, and together with his wife he treads back the path to their youth, to the "moment, one and infinite" in which they found each other once for all.

"My perfect wife, my Leonor,Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too,Whom else could I dare look backward for,With whom beside should I dare pursueThe path grey heads abhor?* * * * *My own, confirm me! If I treadThis path back, is it not in prideTo think how little I dreamed it ledTo an age so blest that, by its side,Youth seems the waste instead?"

"My perfect wife, my Leonor,Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too,Whom else could I dare look backward for,With whom beside should I dare pursueThe path grey heads abhor?

* * * * *

My own, confirm me! If I treadThis path back, is it not in prideTo think how little I dreamed it ledTo an age so blest that, by its side,Youth seems the waste instead?"

And now read again:

"Meet,if thou require it,Both demands,Laying flesh and spiritIn thy hands."

A lower note there, is it not? And shall he so require, and she so yield, that backward-treadingpath is not for them—never shalltheysay to one another:

"Come back with me to the first of all,Let us lean and love it over again,Let us now forget and now recall,Break the rosary in a pearly rain,And gather what we let fall!"

Too many tears would fall on that wife's rosary—the wife who had begun so soon to know that Edens shall be lost by thinking Eves!

But let me not enforce a moral. The mood is one that women know, and often wisely use. "Talking"isto be hidden, "cheek on cheek," from the hawk on the bough: but talking, as this wife will quickly see, is not the sum of individuality's expression. She can teach him—learning from him all the while—notto "require it": she, this same sweet, strong-souled woman, for to be able to speak as she speaks here is her sure indenture of freedom.

"That shall be to-morrow,Not to-night:I must bury sorrowOut of sight."

The "sorrow" is for him, not for herself: he has fallen below his highest in the tyranny of to-night. Then be sure that she, so loving and so seeing, shall lift him up to-morrow!Thistear shall be dried.

In this song-cycle of nine poems we are shown the death of a woman's heart. James Lee's wife sums up in herself, as it were, all those "troubles of love" which we have considered in the earlier monologues. The man has failed her—as De Lorge failed his lady, as the poet the "poor, pretty thoughtful thing"; love has left her—as it left the woman ofThe Laboratoryand the girl ofIn a Year; she and her husband are at variance in the great things of life—like the couple, inA Woman's last Word. But even the complete surrender of individuality resolved upon by the wife in that poem would not now avail, if indeed it ever would have availed, the wife of James Lee. All is over, and, as she gradually realises, over with such finality that there is only one thing she can do, and that is to leave him—"set him free."

We learn the mournful story from the wife's lips only; the husband never speaks, and is but once present. All we actually see are the moods of nine separate days—spread over what precise period of time we are not clearly shown, but it was certainlya year. These nine revealings show us every stage from the first faint pang of apprehension to the accepted woe; then the battle withthat—the hope that love may yet prevail; the clutch at some high stoicism drawn from the laws of nature, or from "old earth's" genial wisdom; next, the less exalted plan to be "of use," since there is nothing else for her to be—and finally the flight, the whole renunciation. Echoes hover from all sad women's stories elsewhere studied: the Tear reigns supreme, the Victim isin excelsis—for hardly did Pompilia suffer such excess of misery, since she at least could die, remembering Caponsacchi. James Lee's wife will live, remembering James Lee.

Into the chosen commonplace of the man's name[251:1]we may read a symbolism. "This is every-day's news," the poet seems to say; "you may watch the drama for yourselves whenever you so please." And only indeed in the depth of the woman's passion is there aught unusual.That, as uttered in the final poem, seems more than normal—since she knows her husband for (as she so strangely says of him) "mere ignoble earth"; yet still can claim that he "set down to her"

"Love that was life, life that was love,A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,A rapture to fall where your foot might be."

More—or less—than dog-like is such love, for dogs are unaware of "mere ignoble earth," dogs do not judge and analyse and patronise, and resolve to "make the low nature better for their throes." Never has the mistaken idea, the inept conduct, of passion been so subtly shown us, with so much at once of pity and of irony.

James Lee's wife is a plain woman.

"Why, fade you might to a thing like me,And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair,Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree" . . .

So she cries in the painful concluding poem. Faded, coarse-haired, coarse-skinned . . . is all said? But he had married her. In what, do we find the word of that enigma? In the beauties of her heart and mind—the passionate, devoted heart, the subtle, brooding mind. These had done the first work; and alas! they have done the second also. The heart was passionate and devoted, but it analysed too closely, and then clung too closely; the mind was subtle and intense, but it could not rest, it could not "take for granted"—male synonym for married bliss! And of course we shall not dare deny James Lee his trustiest, sturdiest weapon:she had no sense of humour!. . . If he was incomplete, so too was she; and her incompleteness was of the kind that, in this relation, never fails to fail—his, of the kind that more often than not succeeds. Thus she sums him:

"With much in you waste, with many a weed,And plenty of passions run to seed,But a little good grain too."

This man, who may be reckoned in his thousands, as the corresponding type in woman may, needs—not tyrannically, because unconsciously—a mate who far excels him in all that makes nobility; and, nine times out of ten, obtains her. "Mrs. James Lee" (how quaintly difficult it is to realise that sequence!) is, on the contrary, of the type that one might almost say inevitably fails to find the "true" mate. Perhaps shehasnone. Perhaps, to be long loved, to be even long endured, this type must alter itself by modification or suppression, like the wife in theLast Word—who was not of it! For here is the very heart of the problem: can or cannot character be altered? James Lee's wife is of the morbid, the unbalanced, the unlovely: these, if they are to "survive," must learn the lore of self-suppression. Not for them exactingness, caprice, the gay or grave analysis of love and lover: such moods charm alone in lovely women, and even inthembring risks along. The Mrs. Lees must curb them wholly. As the whims of unwedded love, they may perchance amuse or interest; marriage, for such, comports them not at all.

Let us trace, compassionately if ironically, the mistakes of this sad woman.

He is coming back to their seaside home at Sainte-Marie, near Pornic—the Breton "wild little place" which Browning knew and loved so well. "Close to the sea—a hamlet of a dozen houses, perfectly lonely—one may walk on the edge of the low rocks by the sea for miles. I feel out of the earth sometimes as I sit here at the window."[254:1]

And at the windowshesits, watching for James Lee's return. Yesterday it was summer, but the strange sudden "stop" has come, eerily, as it always seems to come.

"Ah, Love, but a dayAnd the world has changed!The sun's away,And the bird estranged;The wind has dropped,And the sky's deranged:Summer has stopped."

We can picture him as he arrives and listens to her: is there already a faint annoyance? Need she so drearily depict the passing of summer? It is bad enough that itshouldpass—we need not talk about it! Such annoyance we all have felt with the relentless chroniclers of change. Enough, enough; since summer is gone and we cannot bring it back, let us think of something else. . . . But she goeson, and now we shall not doubt that he is enervated, for this is what she says:

"Look in my eyes!Wilt thou change too?Should I fear surprise?Shall I find aught newIn the old and dear,In the good and true,With the changing year?"

The questions have come to her—come on what cold blast from heaven, or him? But in pity for herself, let her not ask them! We seem to see the man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind. "I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And then, doomed blunderer, she goes on:

"Thou art a man,But I am thy love.For the lake, its swan;For the dell, its dove;And for thee (oh, haste!)Me, to bend above,Me, to hold embraced."

She does notsay, "oh, haste!"—that is the silent comment (we must think) on her not instantly answered plea for his embrace. . . . And when the embrace does come—the claimed embrace—we can figure to ourselves the all it lacks.

Summer now indeed is gone; they are sitting by their fire of wood. The blue and purple flames leap up and die and leap again, and she sits watching them. The wood that makes those coloured flames is shipwreck wood. . . .

"Oh, for the ills half-understood,The dim dead woeLong agoBefallen this bitter coast of France!"

And then, ever the morbid analogy, the fixed idea:

"Well, poor sailors took their chance;I take mine."

Out there on the sea even now, some of those "poor sailors" may be eyeing the ruddy casement and gnashing their teeth for envy and hate,

"O' the warm safe house and happy freight—Thee and me."

The irony of it seizes her. Those sailors need not curse them! Ships safe in port have their own perils of rot and rust and worms in the wood that gnaw the heart to dust. . . . "That is worse."

And how long the house has stood here, to anger the drenched, stark men on the sea! Who lived here before this couple came? Did another woman before herself watch the man "with whom beganlove's voyage full-sail" . . . watch him and see the planks of love's ship start, and hell open beneath?

Thismood she speaks not, only sits and broods upon. And he? Men too can watch, and struggle with themselves, and feel that little help is given them. Some sailors come safe home, and these would have been lighted by the ruddy casement. But she thinks only of the sailors drowning, and gnashing their teeth for hate of the "warm safe house." That melancholy brooding—and if she but looked lovely while she broods. . . .

She stands alone in the doorway, and looks out upon the dreary autumn landscape.[257:1]It is a grey October day; the sea is in "stripes like a snake"—olive-pale near the land, black and "spotted white with the wind" in the distance. How ominous it shows: good fortune is surely on the wing.

"Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!"

As she gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and her spirit shrinks curled."

But courage, courage! Winter comes to all—not to them alone. And have they not love, and a house big enough to hold them, with its four rooms, and the field there, red and rough, not yielding now, but again to yield? Rabbits and magpies, though now they find no food there (the magpies already have well-nigh deserted it; when onedoesalight, it seems an event), yet will again find food. But November—the chill month with its "rebuff"—will see both rabbits and magpies quite departed. . . . No! This shall not be her mood. Winter comes indeed to mere material nature; God means precisely that the spirit shall inherit His power to put life into the darkness and the cold. The spirit defies external change:

"Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!"

And she turns to go in, for the hour at rest and solaced. They have the house, and the field . . . and love.

Rest and solace have departed: winter is come—to all. She walks alone on the beach; one may do that, "on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, for miles";[258:1]and broods once more. She figures him beside her; they are speaking frankly of her pain. She "will be quiet." . . . Piteous phrase of all unquiet women! She will be quiet; she will "reasonwhy he is wrong." Well for her that the talk is but a fancied one; she would not win far with such a preamble, were it real! It is thus that in almost every word we can trace the destined failure of this loving woman. . . . She begins her "reasoning."

"You wanted my love—is that much true?And so I did love, so I do:What has come of it all along?I took you—how could I otherwise?For a world to me, and more;For all, love greatens and glorifiesTill God's aglow, to the loving eyes,In what was mere earth before.Yes, earth—yes, mere ignoble earth!Now do I mis-state, mistake?Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,Seal my sense up for your sake?Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed!You were just weak earth, I knew":

"You wanted my love—is that much true?And so I did love, so I do:What has come of it all along?

I took you—how could I otherwise?For a world to me, and more;For all, love greatens and glorifiesTill God's aglow, to the loving eyes,In what was mere earth before.

Yes, earth—yes, mere ignoble earth!Now do I mis-state, mistake?Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,Seal my sense up for your sake?

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed!You were just weak earth, I knew":

—and then, pursuing, she sums him up as we saw at the beginning of our study.

Well for her, I say again, that this is but a fancied talk! And since it is, we can accord her a measure of wisdom. For shehasbeen wise in one thing: she has not "wronged his weakness and called it worth"—that memorable phrase, so Browningesque!

She has "seen through" him, yet she loves him.Thus far, then, kind and wise in her great passion. . . . But she shouldforgetthat she has seen through him—she should keep that vision in the background, not hold it ever in her sight. And now herself begins to see that this is where she has not been wise. She took him for hers, just as he was—and did not he, thus accepted, find her his? Has she not watched all that was as yet developed in him, and waited patiently, wonderingly, for the more to come?

"Well, and if none of these good things came,What did the failure prove?The man was my whole world, all the same."

Thatis the fault in her:

"That I do love, watch too long,And wait too well, and weary and wear;And 'tis all an old story, and my despairFit subject for some new song."

She has shown him too much love and indulgence and hope implied in the indulgence: this was the wrong way. The "bond" has been felt—and such "light, light love" as his has wings to fly at the mere suspicion of a bond. He has grown weary of her "wisdom"; pleasure is his aim in life, andthatis always ready to "turn up next in a laughing eye." . . . So the songs have said and will say for all time—the new songs for the old despair.

But though she knows all this (we seem to see),she will not be able to act upon it. Always she will watch too long, and wait too well. Hers is a nature as simple as it is intense. No sort of subterfuge is within her means—neither the gay deception nor the grave. What she knows that he resents, she still must do immutably—bound upon the wheel of her true self. For only one "self" she has, and that the wrong one.

She turns back, she walks homeward along the beach—"on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, for miles."

But still love is a power! Love can move mountains, for is not love the same as faith? And not a mountain is here, but a mere man's heart—already "moved," for hehasloved her.

It is summer again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry grass—if one still can call it grass, so "deep was done the work of the summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the grass, and flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a shell: "death's altar by the lone shore." The drear analogies succeed one another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead grass, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket! A cricket—only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real fairy, with wings allright." And there too on the rock, like a drop of fire, that gorgeous-coloured butterfly.

"No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,See, wonderful blue and red!"

Shall there not then be other analogies? May not the minds of men, though burnt and bare as the turf and the rock, be changed like them, transfigured like them:

"With such a blue-and-red grace, not theirs—Love settling unawares!"

It was almost a miracle, was it not? the way they changed. Such miracles happen every day.

These clever young men! She is reading a poem of the wind.[262:1]The singer asks what the wind wants of him—so instant does it seem in its appeal.

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