Once at home, where Beth and the Colonel were still absent, Judith went to the book-case in the little parlour and drew out the volume of Rossetti's poems. "Jenny," she found in the index, and turning to the page, she read:
"Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea——"
No, not that kind of a Jenny was that whom she had seen. Rather this:
"When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
Along the streets alone, and there,
Round the long park, across the bridge,
The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
Wind on together and apart,
A fiery serpent for your heart."
And then the moral, the world-moral, this:
"Like a toad within a stone
Seated while Time crumbles on;
Which sits there since the world was curs'd
By man's transgression at the first;
Which always—whitherso the stone
Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
Aye, and shall not be driven out
Till that which shuts him round about
Break at the very Master's stroke,
And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
Even so within this world is Lust."
Judith sat with the book open in her lap, meditating. She knew enough of that lower life to have for it a man's pity rather than a woman's scorn; recalling Mather's action, she liked him better for it. And she began to think of him regretfully, as one who just missed the highest capacities and so failed to meet the supreme tests. "A fine fellow!" she murmured, so absorbed that she did not hear the door-bell ring, nor notice footsteps until Mather himself entered the room with hurried step. He wore his overcoat; on his brow was still the frown of care.
"Ah," he said, "I am glad to find you. Is Jim Wayne here, Judith?"
She rose and laid the book aside, carefully, so that he should not see what she had been reading. "No," she answered. "It is his night to come. But I saw him down town, George, and he looked worried. Is anything wrong?"