There it lies—there. . . .
"Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on the mouth if you will!"
—and, looking her last look round the den, she prepares to go; but what is that mark on her gorgeous gown? Brush it off! Brush off that dust! It might bring horror down on her in an instant, before she knows or thinks, and she is going straight from here to dance at the King's. . . . She is gone, with her jealousy and her anguish and her passion, and, clutched to her heart, the phial that shall end but one of those torments.
She is gone, and she remains for ever. Her age is past, but not the hearts that ached in it. We curb those hearts to-day; we do not poison now; but have we forgotten the mood for poisoning?
"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?"
Such fiercenesses are silenced now; but, silent, they have still their utterance, and it is here.
IV.—IN A YEAR
Nay—here we have the heart unsilenced yet unfierce, the gentle, not the "dreadful," heart of woman: as true to type, so true indeed that we can even figure to ourselves the other hours in which the lady of The Laboratory may have known, like the girl here, only dim, aching wonder at her lover's mutability.