“O you realize not what it is, my dear,
To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,
And nightly take him into my arms!
Come to the child no name or fame,
Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”
XII
AT THE DRAPER’S
“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
I shall know nothing of it, believe me!”
And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
“O, I didn’t see you come in there—
Why couldn’t you speak?”—“Well, I didn’t. I left
That you should not notice I’d been there.
“You were viewing some lovely things. ‘Soon required
For a widow, of latest fashion’;
And I knew ’twould upset you to meet the man
Who had to be cold and ashen
“And screwed in a box before they could dress you
‘In the last new note in mourning,’
As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
I left you to your adorning.”
XIII
ON THE DEATH-BED
“I’ll tell—being past all praying for—
Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,
And got some scent of the intimacy
That was under way between her and me;
And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost
One night, at the very time almost
That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,
And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.
“The news of the battle came next day;
He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,
Got out there, visited the field,
And sent home word that a search revealed
He was one of the slain; though, lying alone
And stript, his body had not been known.
“But she suspected. I lost her love,
Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;
And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score,
Though it be burning for evermore.”