"Woe to him, . . ." he exclaim'd . . . "woe to him that shall feel Such a hope! for I swear, if he did but reveal One glimpse,--it should be the last hope of his life!"
The clench'd hand and bent eyebrow betoken'd the strife She had roused in his heart.
"You forget," she began, "That you menace yourself. You yourself are the man That is guilty. Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever? O think!
The trial from which you, the stronger ones, shrink, You ask woman, the weaker one, still to endure;
You bid her be true to the laws you abjure;
To abide by the ties you yourselves rend asunder, With the force that has fail'd you; and that too, when under The assumption of rights which to her you refuse, The immunity claim'd for yourselves you abuse!
Where the contract exists, it involves obligation To both husband and wife, in an equal relation.
You unloose, in asserting your own liberty, A knot, which, unloosed, leaves another as free.
Then, O Alfred! be juster at heart: and thank Heaven That Heaven to your wife such a nature has given That you have not wherewith to reproach her, albeit You have cause to reproach your own self, could you see it!"
VI.
In the silence that follow'd the last word she said, In the heave of his chest, and the droop of his head, Poor Lucile mark'd her words had sufficed to impart A new germ of motion and life to that heart Of which he himself had so recently spoken As dead to emotion--exhausted, or broken!
New fears would awaken new hopes in his life.
In the husband indifferent no more to the wife She already, as she had foreseen, could discover That Matilda had gain'd at her hands, a new lover.
So after some moments of silence, whose spell They both felt, she extended her hand to him. . . .
VII.
"Well?"
VIII.
"Lucile," he replied, as that soft quiet hand In his own he clasp'd warmly, "I both understand And obey you."
"Thank Heaven!" she murmur'd.
"O yet, One word, I beseech you! I cannot forget,"
He exclaim'd, "we are parting for life. You have shown My pathway to me: but say, what is your own?"
The calmness with which until then she had spoken In a moment seem'd strangely and suddenly broken.
She turn'd from him nervously, hurriedly.
"Nay, I know not," she murmur'd, "I follow the way Heaven leads me; I cannot foresee to what end.
I know only that far, far away it must tend From all places in which we have met, or might meet.
Far away!--onward upward!"
A smile strange and sweet As the incense that rises from some sacred cup And mixes with music, stole forth, and breathed up Her whole face, with those words.
"Wheresoever it be, May all gentlest angels attend you!" sighed he, "And bear my heart's blessing wherever you are!"
And her hand, with emotion, he kiss'd.
IX.
From afar That kiss was, alas! by Matilda beheld.
With far other emotions: her young bosom swell'd, And her young cheek with anger was crimson'd.
The Duke Adroitly attracted towards it her look By a faint but significant smile.
X.
Much ill-construed, Renown'd Bishop Berkeley has fully, for one, strew'd With arguments page upon page to teach folks That the world they inhabit is only a hoax.
But it surely is hard, since we can't do without them, That our senses should make us so oft wish to doubt them!
