To hear my story, hear the whole of it?

And with a shamefaced air and reddened cheek

That “others know it all, and why not thou?”

Who has been talking to thee of me, then;

Setting thee on to question and suspect?

Ah, boy, with eyes still full of childish dreams,

And yet with manhood on the firm young lip,

’Tis a hard thing to ask me, and a strange!

A woman does not easily lay bare

Her history, which is her very heart,