think of something else. . . . But she goes on, and now we shall not\
doubt that he is enervated, for this is what she says:

"Look in my eyes!
Wilt thou change too?
Should I fear surprise?
Shall I find aught new
In the old and dear,
In the good and true,
With the changing year?"

The questions have come to her--come on what cold blast from heaven, or
him? But in pity for herself, let her not ask them! We seem to see the
man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the
thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind.
"I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And
then, doomed blunderer, she goes on:

"Thou art a man,
But I am thy love.
For the lake, its swan;
For the dell, its dove;
And for thee (oh, haste!)
Me, to bend above,
Me, to hold embraced."

She does not _say_, "oh, haste!"--that is the silent comment (we must
think) on her not instantly answered plea for his embrace. . . . And
when the embrace does come--the claimed embrace--we can figure to
ourselves the all it lacks.

II.--BY THE FIRESIDE

Summer now indeed is gone; they are sitting by their fire of wood. The
blue and purple flames leap up and die and leap again, and she sits
watching them. The wood that makes those coloured flames is shipwreck
wood. . . .

"Oh, for the ills half-understood,
The dim dead woe
Long ago
Befallen this bitter coast of France!"

And then, ever the morbid analogy, the fixed idea:

"Well, poor sailors took their chance;
I take mine."

Out there on the sea even now, some of those "poor sailors" may be
eyeing the ruddy casement and gnashing their teeth for envy and hate,

"O' the warm safe house and happy freight
--Thee and me."

The irony of it seizes her. Those sailors need not curse them! Ships
safe in port have their own perils of rot and rust and worms in the wood
that gnaw the heart to dust. . . . "That is worse."

And how long the house has stood here, to anger the drenched, stark men
on the sea! Who lived here before this couple came? Did another woman
before herself watch the man "with whom began love's voyage full-sail"
. . . watch him and see the planks of love's ship start, and hell open
beneath?

_This_ mood she speaks not, only sits and broods upon. And he? Men too
can watch, and struggle