". . . for if you gave me
Leave to take or to refuse,
In earnest, do you think I'd choose
That sort of new love to enslave me?
Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;
As little fear of losing it as winning:
Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,
And only parents' love can last our lives."
And she turns, thus rejecting the new love, to the "Son and Mother, gentle pair," who commune at evening in the turret: what prevents her being Luigi?
"Let me be Luigi! If I only knew
What was my mother's face—my father, too!"
For Pippa has never seen either, knows not who either was, nor whence each came. And just because, thus ignorant, she cannot truly figure to herself such love, she now rejects in turn this third pretending—
"Nay, if you come to that, best love of all
Is God's;"
—and she will be Monsignor! To-night he will bless the home of his dead brother, and God will bless in turn
"That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest."
Now all the weighing of love with love is over; she has chosen, and already has the proof of having chosen rightly, already seems to share in God's love, for there comes back to memory an ancient New-Year's hymn—
"All service ranks the same with God."