Chapter LXXII

Then Edith lean’d her face against her hand,
And slowly came the words that seem’d so dear:
“It may be, Norman, may—I know—I feel—
It must be earth, so roughly handling one,
Should round experience for some wise design.
Yet this—it cannot be—how can it?—nay—
For me you come—and you? your voice I hear?
No echo void, oft, oft so sweet in dreams?—
Nor now to wake me?—Nay I trust. You may—
’Twill stray no more—take back your wanderer.”

“My wanderer!” I answer’d, when I could;
“Ah Edith, you but wander’d as the lamb;
My spotless, worldling-mediator, you!—
It wander’d?—yes; it cross’d a threshold chill;
A proud cathedral enter’d; there found one
Too pleased with what he had, to gaze outside.
To him those arches low seem’d high as heaven;
And all the sweet and sunny air without,
When strain’d through stain’d and smoke-wreathed window-panes,
Gleam’d lurid as were hell. This man spied you:
He saw you shun him—leave him. He pursued—
Out, past the doorway—and he found God’s world
So much more broad than walls named after Him!”