Volume IV Part 22 (1/2)
XVII.
”A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.
XVIII.
”You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter!--I've broken the thing.
XIX.
”You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.
XX.
”Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills, And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.
XXI.
”I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week, For the sake of ... what was it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on a cheek?
XXII.
”And since, when all's said, you're too n.o.ble to stoop to the frivolous cant About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant,
XXIII.
”I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you might dream or avow By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.
XXIV.
”There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can, That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.
XXV.
”Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar-- You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.
XXVI.
”You wronged me: but then I considered ... there's Walter! And so at the end I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.
XXVII.
”Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!
Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.”
BIANCA AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES.
I.
The cypress stood up like a church That night we felt our love would hold, And saintly moonlight seemed to search And wash the whole world clean as gold; The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: The fire-flies and the nightingales Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales!
II.