“That I had never been there,
But had gone
To my locked room—unseen there,
Curtains drawn,
Long days abiding—told I, wonder-wan.
“‘Nay, ’twas your form and vesture,
Cloak and gown,
Your hooded features—gesture
Half in frown,
That faced me, pale,’ he urged, ‘that night in town.
“‘And when, outside, I handed
To her chair
(As courtesy demanded
Of me there)
The leading lady, you peeped from the stair.
“Straight pleaded I: ‘Forsooth, Love,
Had I gone,
I must have been in truth, Love,
Mad to don
Such well-known raiment.’ But he still went on
“That he was not mistaken
Nor misled.—
I felt like one forsaken,
Wished me dead,
That he could think thus of the wife he had wed!
“His going seemed to waste him
Like a curse,
To wreck what once had graced him;
And, averse
To my approach, he mused, and moped, and worse.
“Till, what no words effected
Thought achieved:
It was my wraith—projected,
He conceived,
Thither, by my tense brain at home aggrieved.
“Thereon his credence centred
Till he died;
And, no more tempted, entered
Sanctified,
The little vault with room for one beside.”
Thus far the lady’s story.—
Now she, too,
Reclines within that hoary
Last dark mew
In Mellstock Quire with him she loved so true.