VI

Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?

But where do you go? said the lady, while both sat under the yew,

Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar--

For the sake of . . . what is it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?

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Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!

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You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

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To find me so fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.

But you, he replied, have a daughter, a young child, who was laid

VII

Because九-九-藏-书-网 I fear you, he answered;--because you are far too fair,

XX

IV

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About crimes irresistable, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant.

X

There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can,

Why, that, she said, is no reason. Loves always free I am told.

Yet farewell so, he answered; --the sunstrokes fatal at times.

I

XXI

And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.

If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much

XXII

And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.

Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.

And since, when alls said, ９9liｂ•ｎｅtyoure too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant

In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."

I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.

II

A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head

V

That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.

I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.

And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.

I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

You grew, sir, pale to impertine

九_九_藏_书_网

nce, once when I showed you a ring.

If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and wheres the pretense?

I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week,

You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! Ive broken the thing.

Oh that, she said, is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,

XXVI

Oh that, she said, is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:

In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.

You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.

Her eyes blazed upon him--And you! You bring us your vices so near

Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you 九-九-藏-书-网not. Dare you imply

Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.

XXIII

To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! --shall I thank you for such?

XVI

What reason had you, and what right,--I appel to your soul from my life,--

III

That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought twould defame us to hear!

XIV

You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then

Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,

Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.

I determined to prove to yourself that, whateer you might dream or avow

At which he rose up in his anger,--Why now, you no longer arewｗw.９９lｉｂ•ｎｅｔ fair!

And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

Oh that, she said, is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;

By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

But I, he replied, have promised another, when love was free,

To love her alone, alone, who alone from afar loves me.

At which she laughed out in her scorn: These men! Oh these men overnice,

You wronged me: but then I considered . . . theres Walter! And so at the end

Loves a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,

I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.

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