Chapter XII

My face flamed hot as if its veil of flesh
Would burn, and bare the soul, to show I meant
No rudeness. Elbert’s keen-eyed sister laugh’d,
And, walking homeward then, kept bantering me,
To storm my heart with courage womanly,
So sure that love of sex controls us all.
“So fortunate!” she cried; “Heaven favor’d me.
They had no escort,—I no rival near;
And I must ply my arts this very eve.”

“Ah, but my plans!” I said;—“I leave to-day
For studies at Berlin.”

“Yes, yes; your plans!—
You serve ideals, like all idiots.
But you are more, much more, than out your teens;
And—well, you are no hermit, any way.”

“Then must I find”—I laugh’d, yet half in earnest—
“The charms to tempt me!” and my reckoning
Fill’d all my fingers doubly with the traits
Of perfect womanhood.
“She owns,” I heard,
“All these, and more. For once, my poet, dream;
And full Elysium waits you when you wake.
But mind you, Norman, maids of Edith’s kind,
In whose one person love so womanly
With intellect so manly has been join’d,
Need not to marry for a hand or head.
There, hearts alone can win. Bear this in mind;
And fan your fancy till your words grow warm,
Ay, glow to flash the white heat of the soul!”
Then, crying from her door, “Farewell till eve,”
True to her sex, unanswer’d yet assured,
The woman left.