Chapter L

And yet,
I could but blame myself; so fain to draw
This gentler soul from her still streams of life
Toward waves thus fiercely dash’d about my own!
You know, though, how it is: our thought, like light,
Opposed, will vaunt itself; and brightest play,
Glanced off from things it does not penetrate.
So, more to shock her than for sympathy,
My thought play’d round the surface of her life:
It had been shaped so—to so smooth a thing—
I burn’d to warp it of complacency.
Oft, though unconscious of the least mistruth,
I feign’d a fall in fancied depths of ill,
And mock’d that I might hear her call me thence;
And learn’d therein to envy some the rake.
For what a charm it were to hear—not so?
That is, if one were vicious, through and through—
Such pleas for love from lips that aye were pure?
The very depth of one’s unworthiness
Would whet such relish for a thing so strange!