GIRL.
Sin crusts me o'er as limpets crust the rocks.
I would be thrust from ev'ry human door;
I dare not knock at heaven's.
WALTER.
Poor homeless one!
There is a door stands wide for thee and me—
The door of hell. Methinks we are well met.
I saw a little girl three years ago,
With eyes of azure and with cheeks of red,
A crowd of sunbeams hanging down her face;
Sweet laughter round her; dancing like a breeze.
I'd rather lair me with a fiend in fire
Than look on such a face as hers to-night.
But I can look on thee, and such as thee;
I'll call thee "Sister;" do thou call me "Brother."
A thousand years hence, when we both are damned,
We'll sit like ghosts upon the wailing shore,
And read our lives by the red light of hell.
Shall we not, Sister?
GIRL.
O thou strange, wild man!
Let me alone: what would you seek with me?
WALTER.
Your ear, my Sister. I have that within
Which urges me to utterance. I could accost
A pensive angel, singing to himself
Upon a hill in heaven, and leave his mind
As dark and turbid as a trampled pool,
To purify at leisure.—I have none
To listen to me, save a sinful woman
Upon a midnight bridge.—She was so fair,
God's eye could rest with pleasure on her face.
Oh, God, she was so happy! Her short life,
As full of music as the crowded June
Of an unfallen orb. What is it now?
She gave me her young heart, full, full of love:
My return—was to break it. Worse, far worse;
I crept into the chambers of her soul,
Like a foul toad, polluting as I went.
GIRL.
I pity her—not you. Man trusts in God;
He is eternal. Woman trusts in man,
And he is shifting sand.