"He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do . . ."

--the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in
the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps
through lovers in their bliss. They could not forget _me_, she thinks,
as all her sister-sufferers think. . . . Yet even in this hell, there is
some solace. They must be remembering her, and

". . . they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear
Empty church, to pray God in, for them!--I am here."

Yes, here--where the old man works for her: grinding, moistening, and
mashing his paste, pounding at his powder. It is better to sit here and
watch him than go dance at the King's; and she looks round in her
restless, nervous anguish--the dagger in her heart, but this way, _this_
way, to stanch the wound it makes!

"That in the mortar--you call it a gum?
Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!
And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,
Sure to taste sweetly--is that poison too?"

But, maddened by the deadlier drug of wretchedness, she loses for a
moment the single vision of her rival: it were good to have _all_ the
old man's treasures, for the joy of dealing death around her at that
hateful Court where each knows of her misery.

"To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!"

She need but give a lozenge "at the King's," and Pauline should die in
half an hour; or light a pastille, and Elise, "with her head and her
breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead." . . . But he is
taking too long.

"Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim!
Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?"

For if it were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and
dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift
the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the
old man knows--this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to
the vessel again, a new doubt assails her.

"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me--
That's why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes--say, 'No!'
To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I t