"Shall I read you her letter?" he asked.
"As you will."
"Then I will!—It is in verse and the place from which she dates it is,
"Our Island of Dreams," which she explains in a sub-heading is
"By the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn"
—a line which she has borrowed from Keats. This is what she writes:
"Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,
Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;
The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart
But colder those wild words of doom, 'Ye must part!'
"O'er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry;
Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.
I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee,
From our lone island home and the moan of the sea:
"Away,—far away—from the wild ocean shore,
Where the waves ever murmur, 'No more, nevermore,'
Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hear
The lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear.
"Where the clouds that now veil from us heaven's fair light,
Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night;
When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispel
He shall know if I loved him; but never how well."