They are married, and they have come to a spiritual crisis. She does not, cannot, think as he thinks. But does thinking signify? She loves—is not that enough? Can she not have done with thinking, or at all events with talking about thinking? Perhaps, with every striving, she shall achieve no more than that: to say nothing, to use no influence, to yield the sanctioned woman's trophy of the "last word." . . . Shall she, then, be yielding aught of value, if she contends no more?
"What so wild as words are?"
—and that they should strive and argue! Why, it is as when birds debate about some tiny marvel of those marvellous tiny lives, while the hawk spies from a bough above.
"See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek!"
For that hawk is ever watching life: it stands for the mysterious effluence which falls on joy and kills it; and that may just as well be "talking" as aught else! He shall have his own way—or no: that is a paltry yielding. There shall be no way but his.
"What so false as truth is,
False to thee?"
She abandons then the cold abstraction; she does not even wish to "know":
"Where the apple reddens
Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.
Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!
Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought—