FOOTNOTES:

"Love, the love sole and whole without alloy."

Vainly! Such an appeal "must be felt, not heard." Her calm regard was unchanged—nay, rather it had grown harsh and hard, had seemed to imply disdain, repulsion, and he could not face those things; he rose from his kissing of her feet—hedidgo forth again. This time he might return, immaculate, from the path of that "lambent flamelet." . . . He knew he could not, but—hemight! She promises that he can: should he not trust her?

And now, to-day, once more he is returned. Still she stands, still she listens, still she smiles! But he protests at last:

"Surely I had your sanction when I faced,Fared forth upon that untried yellow rayWhence I retrack my steps?"

The crimson, the purple had been explored; from them he had come back deep-stained. How has the yellow used him? He has placed himself again for judgment before her "blank pure soul, alike the source and tomb of that prismatic glow." To this yellow he has subjected himself utterly: shehadordained it! He was to "bathe, to burnish himself, soul and body, to swim and swathe in yellow licence." And here he is: "absurd and frightful," "suffused with crocus, saffron, orange"—just as he had been with crimson, purple!

She willed it so: he was to track the yellow ray.He pleads once more her own permission—nay, command! And, as before, she shows

"Scarce recognition, no approval, someMistrust, more wonder at a man becomeMonstrous in garb, nay—flesh-disguised as well,Through his adventure."

But she had said that, if he were worthily to retain her love, he must share the knowledge shrined in her supernal eyes. And this was the one way formanto gain that knowledge. Well, it is as before:

"I pass into your presence, I receiveYour smile of pity, pardon, and I leave."

But no! This time he will not leave, he will not dumbly bend to his penance. Hitherto he has trusted her word that the feat can be achieved, the ray trod to its edge, yet he return unsmirched. He has tried the experiment—and returned, "absurd as frightful." This is his last word.

". . . No, I say:No fresh adventure! No more seeking loveAt end of toil, and finding, calm aboveMy passion, the old statuesque regard,The sad petrific smile!"

And he turns upon her with a violent invective. She is not so much hard and hateful as mistaken and obtuse.

"You very woman with the pert pretenceTo match the male achievement!"

Whocould not be victorious when all is made easy, when the rough effaces itself to smooth, the gruff "grinds down and grows a whisper"; when man's truth subdues its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush spear that womanly falsehood fights with? Oh woman's ears that will not hear the truth! oh woman's "thrice-superfine feminity of sense," that ignores, as by right divine, the process, and takes the spotless result from out the very muck that made it!

But he breaks off. "Ah me!" he cries,

"The true slave's querulous outbreak!"

And forth again, all slavishly, at her behest he fares. Who knows butthistime the "crimson quest" may deepen to a sunrise, not decay to that cold sad sweet smile—which he obeys?

Such a being as this, said Browning himself, "is imaginary, not real; a nymph and no woman"; but the poem is "an allegory of an impossible ideal of love, accepted conventionally."Howimpossible he has shown not only here but everywhere—howconventionally accepted. This is not woman's mission! And in the lover's querulous outbreak—the "true slave's" outbreak—we may read the innermost meaning of the allegory. If women will set up "the pert pretence to match the male achievement,"they must consent to take the world as men are forced to take it. There must be no unfairness, no claim on the chivalry which has sought to shield them: in the homely phrase, they must "take the rough with the smooth"—not the stainless result alone, with a revolted shudder for the marrings which have made it possible.

But having flung these truths at her, observe that the man rues them. He accepts himself as a slave: the slave (as I read this passage) to what istruein the idea of woman's purity. The insufferable creature of the smile is (as he says) the "mistaken and obtuse unreason of a she-intelligence"; but somewhere there was right in her demand. If man could but return, unstained! He must go forth, must explore the rays—of all the claims of woman on him this is most insistent; but if he could explore, and not return "absurd as frightful." . . . He cannot. Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"—the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is notexperience, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the other she must choose: knowledge and the right to judge, or ignorance and the duty to refrain from judgment. . . . And yet—he goes again;he obeys the silver smile! For the "crimson-quest may deepen to a sunrise"; hemaycome back and find her waiting, "sunlight and salvation," because she understands at last; and both shall look for stains from those long shafts, and see none there. . . . Maybe, maybe: he goes—will come again one day; andthatat last may prove itself the day when "men are pure, and women brave."

We pass from the unearthly atmosphere ofNumpholeptos—well-nigh the most abstract of all Browning's poems—to the vivid, astonishing realism ofToo Late.

Edith is dead, and the man who loved her and failed to win her, is musing upon the transmutation of all values in his picture of life which has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and loved her and lost her—and it was as if a great stone had been cast by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it—the waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone full-tide."

The stone thwarted God. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about it. Though thewaves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win past, a thread of water might escape and run through the "evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea. This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall then have stilled his passion.

The second way was better!

"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some nightWhen new things happen, a meteor-ballMay slip through the sky in a line of light,And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"

For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look at his life."

"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"

All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.

"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may,Watch and wear and wonder who will.Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,'The woman is dead that was none of his;And the man that was none of hers may go!'There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .

All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a "want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never give it—and perhaps shedoeswant him. He feels that she does—a "pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" assures him that she "needs help in her grave, and finds none near"—that from his heart, preciselyhis, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it—so! . . . His acquiescence then had been his error.

"I ought to have done more: once my speech,And once your answer, and there, the end,And Edith was henceforth out of reach!Why, men do more to deserve a friend,Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.Why, better even have burst like a thiefAnd borne you away to a rock for us two,In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief" . . .

Well,hehad not done this. But—

"What did the other do? You be judge!Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!Give him his six whole years: I grudgeNone of the life with you, nay, loatheMyself that I grudged his start in advanceOf me who could overtake and pass.But, as if he loved you! No, not he,Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain" . . .

—for he who speaks, though he so loved and loves her, knows that he is and was alone in his worship.He knows even that such worship of her was among unaccountable things. Thathe, young, prosperous, sane, and free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and held it forth toher, and said, "Half a glance, and I drop the glass!" . . . For—and now we come to those amazing stanzas which place this passionate love-song by itself in the world—

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:* * * * *The others? No head that was turned, no heartBroken, my lady, assure yourself!"

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held,More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:

* * * * *

The others? No head that was turned, no heartBroken, my lady, assure yourself!"

Her admirers had quickly recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singlenesswaspeace, and not—what they were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth about her was simply that

"On the whole, you were let alone, I think."

And laid so, on the shelf, she had "looked to the other, who acquiesced." He was a poet, was he not?

"He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh?"

Oh, what a prize! Had she appreciated adequately her pink of poets? . . . But, after all, shehad chosen him, beforethislover: they had both been tried.

"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,Tekel, found wanting, set aside,Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the darkTill comfort come, and the last be bled:He? He is tagging your epitaph."

And now sounds that cry of the girl ofIn a Year.

"If it could only come over again!"

Shemusthave loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and pricked that leathern heart, to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .

"And late it was easy; late, you walkedWhere a friend might meet you; Edith's nameArose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;If I heard good news, you heard the same;When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."

Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good of it! He will keep alive—and long, she shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end. Those othersmay go on with the world—get gold, get women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I,And enjoy our death in the darkness here."[301:1]

And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Onlyhecould have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is which—the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those eyes—and yet "the others" did not love so, the defectswerevalid: there should be some recognition: "Iloved,quand même!" Why, it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:

"I liked that way you had with your curls,Wound to a ball in a net behind:Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's,And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin, too—what a chin!There were certain ways when you spoke, some wordsThat you know you never could pronounce:You were thin, however; like a bird'sYour hand seemed—some would say, the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.But I turn my back on the world: I takeYour hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.Bid me live, Edith!"

But I turn my back on the world: I takeYour hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.Bid me live, Edith!"

—and she shall be queen indeed, shall have high observance, courtship made perfect. He seems to see her stand there—

"Warm too, and white too: would this wineHad washed all over that body of yours,Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!"

. . . The wine of his life, that she would not take—but she shall take it now! He will "slake thirst at her presence" by pouring it away, by drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to do. Edith needs help in her grave and finds none near—wants warmth from his heart? He sends it—so.

Assuredly this is the meaning; yet none of the commentators says so. She was the man's wholelife, and she has died. Then he dies too, that he may live.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I,And enjoy our death in the darkness here."

Yet even in this we have no sense of failure, of "giving-in": it is for intenser life that he dies, and she shall be his queen "while his soul endures."

This is the last of my "women unwon." In none of all these poems does courage fail; love is ever God's secret. It comes and goes: the heart has had its moment. It does not come at all: the heart has known the loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with it. It has set a price upon itself, a cruel crushing price: the heart will pay it, if it can be paid. It has waked too late—it calls from the grave: the heart will follow it there. No love is in vain:

"For God above creates the love to reward the love."

[277:1]He excepts, of course, all through this passage,Any Wife to any Husband—a poem which has not fallen into my scheme.

[285:1]No line which Browning has written is more characteristic than this—nor more famous.

[289:1]InBy the Fireside.

[290:1]Arthur Symons,Introduction to the Study of Browning, p. 198.

[291:1]Browning himself, asked by Dr. Furnivall, on behalf of the Browning Society, to explain this allusion, answered in the fashion which he often loved to use towards such inquirers: "The 'seven spirits' are in the Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron, a common image." . . . "I certainly never intended" (he also said) "to personify wisdom, or philosophy, or any other abstraction." And he summed up the, after all, sufficiently obvious meaning by saying thatNumpholeptosis "an allegory of an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such by a man who all the while" (as I have once or twice had occasion to say of himself!) "cannot quite blind himself to the fact that" (to put it more concisely than he) knowledge and purity are best obtained by achievement. Still more concisely: "Innocence—sin—virtue"—in the Hegelian chord of experience.

[301:1]Here is a clear echo of Heine, in one of his most renowned lyrics:—"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell,In crazy dances they're leaping:We two in the grave lie well, lie well,And I in thine arms am sleeping.The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day,To Heaven or Hell they're hieing:We two care nothing, we two will stayTogether quietly lying."

[301:1]Here is a clear echo of Heine, in one of his most renowned lyrics:—

"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell,In crazy dances they're leaping:We two in the grave lie well, lie well,And I in thine arms am sleeping.The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day,To Heaven or Hell they're hieing:We two care nothing, we two will stayTogether quietly lying."

"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell,In crazy dances they're leaping:We two in the grave lie well, lie well,And I in thine arms am sleeping.

The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day,To Heaven or Hell they're hieing:We two care nothing, we two will stayTogether quietly lying."

Love is not static. We may not sit down and say, "It cannot be more than now; it will not be less. Henceforth I take it for granted." Though she be won, there still is more to do. I say "she" (and Browning says it), because the taking-for-granted ideal is essentially man's—woman has never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it isbecausemen feel so keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it. Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come to an end of it—and, if we were wise, should not desire so to do.

But is she in truth so elusive? Are not women far simpler than they are accounted? "The First Reader in another language," I have elsewhere said of them; but doubtless a woman cannot be the judge. Let us see what Browning, subtle as few other men, thought of our lucidity.

"Room after room,I hunt the house throughWe inhabit together.Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind herLeft in the curtain, the couch's perfume!As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew;Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather."

So elusive, says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious—or, if conscious, blind to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses,for fun, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room! How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And when she tossed her hat off, or carefully put it on before the mirror . . . if the glass did gleam, it was a trick of light;shedid not produce it! For, conscious of this magic, she would lose it; her very inapprehensiveness it is which "brings it off." Yet she loves to hear her lover tell of such imaginings, and the more he tells, the more there seem to be for him.

"Yet the day wears,And door succeeds door;I try the fresh fortune—Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.Spend my whole day in the quest, who cares?But 'tis twilight, you see—with such suites to explore,Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!"

Listening, she begins to understand how deeply he means "herself." It is not only the spell that she leaves behind her in the mere, actual rooms: it is the mystery residing in her "house of flesh." What doesthathouse contain—where isshe? He seems to hold her, yet she "goes out as he enters"; he seems to have found her, yet it is like hide-and-seek at twilight, and half-a-hundred hiders in a hundred rooms!

She listens, puzzled; perhaps a little frightened to be so much of a secret. For she never meant to be—she cannot feel that sheis; and thus, how shall she help him to "find" her? Perhaps she must always elude? She does not desire that: he must not let her escape him! And he quickly answers:

"Escape me?Never—Beloved!While I am I, and you are you,So long as the world contains us both,Me the loving and you the loth,While the one eludes, must the other pursue."

But she is not "the loth"; that is all his fancy. She wants him to find her. And this, in its turn, scareshim.

"My life is a fault at last, I fear:It seems too much like a fate, indeed!Though I do my best, I shall scarce succeed."

It is the trouble of love. He may never reach her. . . . They look at one another, and he takes heart again.

"But what if I fail of my purpose here?It is but to keep the nerves at strain,To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,And, baffled, get up and begin again—So the chase takes up one's life, that's all."

But she is now almost repelled. She is not this enigma: shewantshim to grasp her. Well, then, she can help him, he says:

"Look but once from your farthest boundAt me so deep in the dust and dark,No sooner the old hope goes to groundThan a new one, straight to the self-same mark,I shape me—EverRemoved!"

Is not this the meaning? The two poems seem to me supplementary of each other. First, the sense of her elusiveness; then the dim resentment and fear which this knowledge of mystery awakes in her. She does not (as I have seemed to make her)speakin either of these poems; but the thoughts are those which she must have, and so far, surely, her lover can divine her? The explanation given both by Mrs. Orr and Berdoe ofLove in a Life(the first lyric), that the lover is "inhabiting the same house with his love," seems to me simply inept. Is it not clear that no material house[308:1]is meant? They are both inhabiting thebody; and she, passing through this sphere, touching it at various points, leaves the spell of her mere being everywhere—on the curtain, the couch, the cornice-wreath, the mirror. But throughherhouse he cannot range, as she through actualities. And though ever she eludes him, this is not what she sets out to do; she needs his comprehension; she does not desire to "escape" him.

The old enigma that is no enigma—the sphinx with the answer to the riddle ever trembling on her lips! But if she were understood, she might be taken for granted. . . . So the lips may tremble, but the answer is kept back:

"While the one eludes must the other pursue."

"The desire of the man is for the woman; the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man."

In those two poems the lovers are almost gay; they can turn and smile at one another 'mid the perplexity. The man is eager, resolute, humorous;the woman, if not acquiescent, is at least apprehending. The heart shall find her some day: "next time herself, not the trouble behind her!" She feels that she can aid him to that finding; it depends, in the last resort, onher.

But inTwo in the Campagnaa different lover is to deal with. What he wants is more than this. He wants to pass the limits of personality, to forget the search in the oneness. There is more than "finding" to be done: finding is not the secret. He tries to tell her—and he cannot tell her, for he does not himself fully know.

"I wonder do you feel to-dayAs I have felt since, hand in hand,We sat down on the grass, to strayIn spirit better through the land,This morn of Rome and May?"

His thought escapes him ever. Like a spider's silvery thread it mocks and eludes; he seeks to catch it, to hang his rhymes upon it. . . . No; it escapes, escapes.

"Help me to hold it! First it leftThe yellowing fennel. . . ."

What does the fennel mean? Something, but he cannot grasp it—and the thread now seems to float upon that weed with the orange cup, where five green beetles are groping—but not there eitherdoes it rest . . . it is all about him: entangling, eluding:

"Everywhere on the grassy slope,I traced it. Hold it fast!"

The grassy slope may be the secret! That infinity of passion and peace—the Roman Campagna:

"The champaign with its endless fleeceOf feathery grasses everywhere!Silence and passion, joy and peace,An everlasting wash of air—Rome's ghost since her decease."

And think of all that that plain even now stands for:

"Such life here, through such lengths of hours,Such miracles performed in play,Such primal naked forms of flowers,Such letting nature have her wayWhile heaven looks from its towers!"

They love one another: why cannot they be like that plain, why cannotthey"let nature have her way"? Does she understand?

"How say you? Let us, O my dove,Let us be unashamed of soul,As earth lies bare to heaven above!How is it under our controlTo love or not to love?"

But always they stop short of one another. That is the dread mystery:

"I would that you were all to me,You that are just so much, no more.Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!Where does the fault lie? What the coreO' the wound, since wound must be?"

He longs to yield his will, his whole being—to see with her eyes, set his heart beating by hers, drink his fill from her soul; make her part his—beher. . . .

"No. I yearn upward, touch you close,Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,Catch your soul's warmth—I pluck the roseAnd love it more than tongue can speak—Then the good minute goes."

Goes—with such swiftness! Already he is "far out of it." And shall this never be different?

". . . Must I goStill like the thistle-ball, no bar,Onward, whenever light winds blow?"

He must indeed, for already he is "off again":

"Just when I seemed about to learn!"

Even the letting nature have her way is not the secret. The thread is lost again:

"The old trick! Only I discern—Infinite passion, and the painOf finite hearts that yearn."

Nocontact is close enough. The passion is infinite, the hearts are finite. The deepest love must suffer this doom of isolation: plunged as they may be in one another, body and soul, in the very rapture is the sentence. The good minute goes. It shall be theirs again—again they shall trust it, again the thread be lost: "the old trick!"

For it is the very trick of life, as here we know it. The Campagna itself says that—

"Rome's ghost since her decease."

Mutability, mutability! Though the flowers are the primal, naked forms, they are not the same flowers; though love is ever new, it is ever old.New as to-day is new: old as to-day is old; and all the lovers have discerned, like him,

"Infinite passion, and the painOf finite hearts that yearn."

For has she helped him to hold the thread? No; she too has been the sport of "the old trick." And even of that he cannot be wholly sure:

"Iwonderdo you feel to-dayAs I have felt . . . ?"

In the enchantingLovers' Quarrelwe find a less metaphysical pair than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with themystery of her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, very humanly and gladly, the "time of their lives"! All through the winter they have frolicked: there never was a more enchanting love than she, and plainly he has charmed her just as much. The same sort of fun appealed to them both at the same moment—games out of straws of their own devising; drawing one another's faces in the ashes of the hearth:

"Free on each other's flaws,How we chattered like two church daws!"

And then theTimeswould come in—and the Emperor has married his Mlle. de Montijo!

"There they sit ermine-stoled,And she powders her hair with gold."

Or a travel-book arrives from the library—and the two heads are close together over the pictures.

"Fancy the Pampas' sheen!Miles and miles of gold and greenWhere the sunflowers blowIn a solid glow,And to break now and then the screen—Black neck and eyeballs keen,Up a wild horse leaps between!"

. . . No picture in the book like that—what a genius he is! The book is pushed away; and there lies the table bare:

"Try, will our table turn?Lay your hands there light, and yearnTill the yearning slipsThro' the finger-tipsIn a fire which a few discern,And a very few feel burn,And the rest, they may live and learn!Then we would up and pace,For a change, about the place,Each with arm o'er neck:'Tis our quarter-deck,We are seamen in woeful case.Help in the ocean-space!Or, if no help, we'll embrace."

Then we would up and pace,For a change, about the place,Each with arm o'er neck:'Tis our quarter-deck,We are seamen in woeful case.Help in the ocean-space!Or, if no help, we'll embrace."

The next play must be "dressing-up"; for the sailor-game had ended in that nonsense of a kiss because they had not thought of dressing properly the parts:

"See how she looks now, dressedIn a sledging-cap and vest!'Tis a huge fur cloak—Like a reindeer's zokeFalls the lappet along the breast:Sleeves for her arms to rest,Or to hang, as my Love likes best."

Now it ishisturn; he must learn to "flirt a fan as the Spanish ladies can"—but she must pretend too, so he makes her a burnt-cork moustache, and she "turns into such a man!" . . .

All this was three months ago, when the snow first mesmerised the earth and put it to sleep. Snow-time is love-time—for hearts can then show all:

"How is earth to knowNeath the mute hand's to-and-fro?"* * * * *

"How is earth to knowNeath the mute hand's to-and-fro?"

* * * * *

Three months ago—and now it is spring, and such a dawn of day! The March sun feels like May. He looks out upon it:

"All is blue againAfter last night's rain,And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.Only, my Love's away!I'd as lief that the blue were grey."

Yes—she is gone; they have quarrelled. Or rather, since it does not take two to do that wretched deed,shehas quarrelled. It was some little thing that he said—neither sneer nor vaunt, nor reproach nor taunt:

"And the friends were friend and foe!"

She went away, and she has not come back, and it is three months ago.

One cannot help suspecting that the little thing he said, which wasnotso many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless! This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour—that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. Whathadhe said? Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far more than malice can—for it is more evidently sincere in what it has of the too-much, or thetoo-little. . . . Well, angry exceedingly, or wounded exceedingly, she had gone, and still is gone—and he sits marvelling. Three months! Is she going to stay away for ever? Is she going to cast him off for a word, a "bubble born of breath"? Why, they had beenoneperson!

"Me, do you leave aghastWith the memories We amassed?"

Just for "a moment's spite." . . . She ought to have understood.

"Love, if you knew the lightThat your soul casts in my sight,How I look to youFor the pure and true,And the beauteous and the right—"

But so had she looked tohim, and he had shown her "a moment's spite." . . . Yet he cannot believe that a hasty word can do all this against the other memories. Things like that are indeed for ever happening; trivialities thus can mar immensities. The eye can be blurred by a fly's foot; a straw can stop all the wondrous mechanism of the ear. But that is only the external world; endurance is easy there. It is different with love.

"Wrong in the one thing rare—Oh, it is hard to bear!"

And especially hard now, in this "dawn of day." Little brooks must be dancing down the dell,

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