monologue proves that she can no longer be
patronisingly summed up in "poor pretty thoughtful thing." And she has
cried, in the words which open the poem:

"Stop, let me have the truth of that!
Is that all true?"

--and at first, between jest and bitterness, has given him the sum of
her musings on that moment when he decided to drop the nosegay.

For ten years he has had, tacitly, the last word: his decision has stood
unchallenged. Nor shall it now be altered--he has begun to "tell" her,
to meander sentimentally around that episode, but she will have nothing
less than the truth; they will talk of it, yes, since he has so pleased,
but they will talk of it in _her_ way. So she cuts him short, and draws
this acid, witty little sketch for him. . . . Has she not matured? might
it not have "done," after all? The nosegay was not so insipid! . . . But
suddenly, while she mocks, the deeper "truth of that" invades her soul,
and she must cease from cynic gibes, and yield the word to something
greater in herself.

"Now I may speak: you fool, for all
Your lore! Who made things plain in vain?
What was the sea for? What, the grey
Sad church, that solitary day,
Crosses and graves and swallows' call?

Was there nought better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

No grasping at love, gaining a share
O' the sole spark from God's life at strife
With death . . . ?"

He calls his decision wisdom? It is one kind of wisdom only, and that
the least--"worldly" wisdom. He was old, and she was raw and
sentimental--true; each might have missed something in the other; but
completeness is not for our existence here, we await heaven for that.
Only earthbound creatures--like the star-fish, for instance--become all
they _can_ become in this sphere; man's soul must evolve. Have their
souls evolved? And she cries that they have not:

"The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!"

Of course he "did not know" (as he now seems feebly to interpolate); she
can well believe that, for if he had known, he would have saved two
souls--nay, four. What of his Stephanie, who danced vilely last night,
they say--will he not soon, like the public, abandon her now that "her
vogue has had its day"? . . . And what of the speaker herself? It takes
but h