With spent strength I cast myself at her feet.
'You see,' I said,'I have mixed these colors with my life-wine.'
'Why, then,' she asked, carelessly, 'with your insufficient strength, were you tempted to woo and follow me?'
So my life with its endeavors was a wreck. I thought of the good I had sacrificed, of the hopes that had failed. The Past and Future alike pierced my hands with crucificial nails, till, faint with the pain and the scorning, I lapsed into a long prostration, from which I came at last to the dawn-light of sad, once-forgotten eyes—to the odor of withered rosemary.
'True heart that I spurned,' I cried, 'can you forgive? I will return Aspiro scorn for scorn, and go humbly back, where it is perhaps not yet too late for happiness.'
With dreary reproaches came memory, disenthralled. I dreamed of my youth, its love, and its aim. I pictured a porch with its breeze-tossed vines, a rocking boat on a limpid lake, a narrow path through twilight-brooded woods, and each scene the shrine of a sweet face with brown, banded hair, and love-lit eyes.
And these pictures were the True. My heart cleaved the eternity of separation, beaconing my sad return to them, and I followed gladly, hope being not yet dead.
The summer porch was shady with fragrant vines—but I missed the face. I buoyed my heart, and said, 'Of course she would not have waited so long.'
I went to the woods, through the narrow paths where of old the birds twittered, and javelins of sunshine pierced—on, where we had gone together long ago, till I reached the dell where we pledged our love. Ah! I should find her here—
The sweet face where I should kindle smiles—the brown hair I could once more stroke—the lithe form that I longed to clasp—the true heart that should beat for me in a quiet home.