"Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun:
I as little understand
Love's decay."[238:1]
Here, again, is full authenticity. Girl-like, she sits and broods upon it all—not angry, not even wholly wretched, for, though now she is abandoned, she has not loved "in vain," since she loved greatly. So greatly that still, still, she can dream:
"Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
—Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till, all gone,
He should smile, 'She never seemed
Mine before.'"
But this will not be; in a year it is over for him; and for her "over" too, though not yet ended. How will it end for her?
"Well, this cold clay clod
Was man's heart:
Crumble it, and what comes next?
Is it God ?" . . .
The dream, the silly dream, of each forsaken child!
"'Dying for my sake—
White and pink!
Can't we touch these bubbles then
But they break?'"
That is what he will say to himself, in his high male fashion, when he hears that she is dead; she sits and dreams of it, as women have done since the world began, and will do till it ends.[239:1]
Then, at last, he will know how she loved him; since, for all that has been between them, clearly he has not known that yet. . . . Again, the supreme conviction of our souls that who does know truly all the love, can never turn away from it. Most pitiful, most deceived, of dreams—yet after all, perhaps the horn-gate dream, for who knows "truly" but who loves truly?
Yet indeed (she now muses) has she enough loved him?