"My God, and she is emptied of it now!
Outright now!—how miraculously gone
All of the grace—had she not strange grace once?
Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,
No purpose holds the features up together,
Only the cloven brow and puckered chin
Stay in their places: and the very hair
That seemed to have a sort of life in it,
Drops, a dead web!"
Poignant in its authenticity is her sole, piteous answer—
". . . Speak to me—not of me!"
But he relentlessly pursues the dread analysis of baffled passion's aspect—
"That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle
Broke the delicious indolence—all broken!"
Once more that cry breaks from her—
"To me—not of me!"
but soon the natural anger against his insolence possesses her; she whelms him with a torrent of recrimination. Coward and ingrate he is, beggar, her slave—
". . . a fawning, cringing lie,
A lie that walks and eats and drinks!"