Chapter VI

Golden the sunset gleamed, above the city behind us,
Out of a city of clouds as fairy and lovely as Venice,
While we looked at the fishing-tails of purple and yellow
Far on the rim of the sea, whose light and musical surges
Broke along the sands with a faint, reiterant sadness.
But, when the sails had darkened into black wings, through the
twilight
Sweeping away into night--past the broken tombs of the Hebrews
Homeward we sauntered slowly, through dew-sweet, blossomy alleys;
So drew near the boat by errant and careless approaches,
Entered, and left with indolent pulses the Lido behind us.

All the sunset had paled, and the campanili of Venice
Rose like the masts of a mighty fleet moored there in the water.
Lights flashed furtively to and fro through the deepening twilight.
Massed in one thick shade lay the Gardens; the numberless islands
Lay like shadows upon the lagoons. And on us as we loitered
By their enchanted coasts, a spell of ineffable sweetness
Fell and made us at one with them; and silent and blissful
Shadows we seemed, that drifted on through a being of shadow,
Vague, indistinct to ourselves, unbounded by hope or remembrance.
Yet we knew the beautiful night, as it grew from the evening:
Far beneath us and far above us the vault of the heavens
Glittered and darkened; and now the moon, that had haunted the
daylight
Thin and pallid, dimmed the stars with her fulness of splendor,
And over all the lagoons fell the silvery rain of the moonbeams,
As in the song the young girls sang while their gondolas passed
us,--
Sang in the joy of love, or youth's desire of loving.

Balmy night of the South! O perfect night of the Summer!
Night of the distant dark, of the near and tender effulgence!--
How from my despair are thy peace and loveliness frightened!
For, while our boat lay there at the will of the light undulations,
Idle as if our mood imbued and controlled it, yet ever
Seeming to bear us on athwart those shining expanses
Out to shining seas beyond pursuit or returning--
There, while we lingered, and lingered, and would not break from our
rapture,
Down the mirrored night another gondola drifted
Nearer and slowly nearer our own, and moonlighted faces
Stared. And that sweet trance grew a rigid and dreadful possession,
Which, if no dream indeed, yet mocked with such semblance of
dreaming,
That, as it happens in dreams, when a dear face, stooping to kiss
us,
Takes, ere the lips have touched, some malign and horrible aspect,
_His_ face faded away, and the face of the Dead--of that other--
Flashed on mine, and writhing, through every change of emotion,--
Wild amaze and scorn, accusation and pitiless mocking,--
Vanished into the swoon whose blackness encompassed and hid me.

PHILIP--_To Bertha_.

I am not sure, I own, that if first I had seen my delusion
When I saw _you_, last night, I should be so ready to give you
Now your promises back, and hold myself nothing above you,
That it is mine to offer a freedom you never could ask for.
Yet, believe me, indeed, from no bitter heart I release you:
You are as free of me now as though I had died in the battle,
Or as I never had lived. Nay, if it is mine to forgive you,
Go without share of the blame that could hardly be all upon your
side.

Ghosts are not sensitive things; yet, after my death in the
papers,
Sometimes a harrowing doubt assailed this impalpable essence:
Had I done so well to plead my cause at that moment,
When your consent must be yielded less to the lover than soldier?
"Not so well," I was answered by that ethereal conscience
Ghosts have about them, "and not so nobly or wisely as might be."
--Truly, I loved you, then, as now I love you no longer.

I was a prisoner then, and this doubt in the languor of sickness
Came; and it clung to my convalescence, and grew to the purpose,
After my days of captivity ended, to seek you and solve it,
And, if I haply had erred, to undo the wrong, and release you.

Well, you have solved me the doubt. I dare to trust that you wept
me,
Just a little, at first, when you heard of me dead in the battle?
For we were plighted, you know, and even in this saintly humor,
I would scarce like to believe that my loss had merely relieved
you.
Yet, I say, it was prudent and well not to wait for my coming
Back from the dead. If it may be I sometimes had cherished a fancy
That I had won some right to the palm with the pang of the
martyr,--
Fondly intended, perhaps, some splendor of self-abnegation,--
Doubtless all that was a folly which merciful chances have spared
me.
No, I am far from complaining that Circumstance coolly has ordered
Matters of tragic fate in such a commonplace fashion.
How do I know, indeed, that the easiest isn't the best way?

Friendly adieux end this note, and our little comedy with it.

FANNY--_To Clara_.