rceness achieved by the shortening and the
alliteration in this line.

[238:1] Mark how the deferred rhymes paint the groping thoughts. Only
after much questioning can the answer come, as it were, in the "chime of
the rhyme."

[239:1] And men also, I hasten to add, that there may be no pluming of
male feathers--if indeed this be an occasion for pluming on either side.

PART IV

[Illustration: THE WIFE]

I

A WOMAN'S LAST WORD

They are married, and they have come to a spiritual crisis. She does
not, cannot, think as _he_ thinks. But does thinking signify? She
loves--is not that enough? Can she not have done with thinking, or at
all events with talking about thinking? Perhaps, with every striving,
she shall achieve no more than that: to _say_ nothing, to use no
influence, to yield the sanctioned woman's trophy of the "last
word." . . . Shall she, then, be yielding aught of value, if she
contends no more?

"What so wild as words are?"

--and that _they_ should strive and argue! Why, it is as when birds
debate about some tiny marvel of those marvellous tiny lives, while the
hawk spies from a bough above.

"See the creature stalking
While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
Cheek on cheek!"

For that hawk is ever watching life: it stands for the mysterious
effluence which falls on joy and kills it; and that may just as well be
"talking" as aught else! He shall have his own way--or no: that is a
paltry yielding. There shall _be_ no way but his.

"What so false as truth is,
False to thee?"

She abandons then the cold abstraction; she does not even wish to
"know":

"Where the apple reddens
Never pry--
Lest we lose our Edens,
Eve and I.

Be a god and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
With thine arm!

Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
Think thy thought--

Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands."

* * * * *

But even as she measures and exults in the abjection of herself, a voice
whispers in her soul that this is not the way. Something is wrong. She
hears, but cannot heed. It must be so, since he desires it--since he can
desire it. Since he _can_ . . .

"That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury so