She smiled upon him: “It is what covers me from loneliness ... it’s ... it’s the little garment which sometime God will take upon him—being God.”
Seven days only and seven little nights we were together and I made scores of poems about her that were different from any poems that have come into the world, but I could never sing them now. In the mornings she would go wash herself in the pools, and Monk and I would walk a little way off from her. Monk was very delicate about that, but I would turn and see the white-armed girl rolling up her dark hair, and her white feet travelling to the water as she pulled the gown from her beauty. She was made like the down of doves and the bloom of bees. It’s like enough she did love me in a very frail and delicate sort of way, like a bush of lavendie might love the wind that would be snaring it from its root in the garden, but never won a petal of it, nor a bloom, only a little of its kind kind air.
We asked her as we went upon the hills: Had she no fear of getting her death?
“Not if I make a wise use of it.”
“A use of your death—and how would you do that, tell me,” says I.
And she told us grand things about death, in her soft wonderful voice; strange talk to be giving the likes of him and me.
“I’d give the heart out of my skin,” said I, “not to be growing old—the sin and sorrow of the world, with no hope of life and despair in its conclusion.”
But Monk was full of laughter at me.
“Ha! ha! better a last hope than a hopeless conclusion,” says Mr. Monk; “so try hope with another lozenge, Michael, and give a free drink to despair.”
“Have you no fear of death?” Mary asked of him.