Though she rose from the sea
There were stains upon her whiteness;
All earth's waters had not sleeked her clean.
For no tides gave her birth,
Nor the salt, glimmering middle depths;
But slime spawned her, the couch of life,
The sunless ooze,
The green bed of Poseidon,
Where with sordid Chaos he mingles obscurely.
Her flanks were of veined marble;
There were stains upon her.
But she who passes, lonely,
Through waste places,
Through bog and forest;
Who follows boar and stag
Unwearied;
Who sleeps, fearless, among the hills;
Though she track the wilds,
Though she breast the crags,
Choosing no path—
Her kirtle tears not,
Her ankles gleam,
Her sandals are silver.
IX
It was midnight when I reached my own door that night, but I was in no mood for lying in bed stark awake in the spiritual isolation of darkness. I went straight to my study, meaning to make up a fire and then hypnotize myself into some form of lethargy by letting my eyes follow the printed lines of a book. If reading in any other sense than physical habit proved beyond me, at least the narcotic monotony of habit might serve.
But I found a fire, already falling to embers, and Susan before it, curled into my big wing chair, her feet beneath her, her hands lying palms upward in her lap. This picture fixed me in the doorway while my throat tightened. Susan did not stir, but she was not sleeping. She had withdrawn.
Presently she spoke, absently—from Saturn's rings; or the moon.
"Ambo? I've been waiting to talk to you; but now I can't or I'll lose it—the whole movement. It's like a symphony—great brasses groaning and cursing—and then violins tearing through the tumult to soar above it."
Her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again it was to shake herself free from whatever spell had bound her. She half yawned, and smiled.
"Gone, dear—all gone. It's not your fault. Words wouldn't hold it. Music might—but music doesn't come. . . . Oh, poor Ambo—you've had a wretched time of it! How tired you look!"
I shut the door quietly and went to her, sitting on the hearth rug at her feet, my knees in my arms.
"Sweetheart," I said, "it seems that in spite of myself I've done you little good and about all the harm possible." And I made a clean breast of all the facts and fears that the evening had developed. "So you see," I ended, "what my guardianship amounts to!"