elian chord of experience.

[301:1] Here is a clear echo of Heine, in one of his most renowned
lyrics:--

"The dead stand up, 'tis the midnight bell,
In crazy dances they're leaping:
We two in the grave lie well, lie well,
And I in thine arms am sleeping.

The dead stand up, 'tis the Judgment Day,
To Heaven or Hell they're hieing:
We two care nothing, we two will stay
Together quietly lying."

II

THE WOMAN WON

Love is not static. We may not sit down and say, "It cannot be more than
now; it will not be less. Henceforth I take it for granted." Though she
be won, there still is more to do. I say "she" (and Browning says it),
because the taking-for-granted ideal is essentially man's--woman has
never been persuaded to hold it. Possibly it is _because_ men feel so
keenly the elusiveness of women that they grow weary in the quest of the
real Herself. But, says Browning, they must not grow weary in it.
Elusive though she be, her lover must not leave her uncaptured. For if
love is the greatest adventure, it is also the longest. We cannot come
to an end of it--and, if we were wise, should not desire so to do.

But is she in truth so elusive? Are not women far simpler than they are
accounted? "The First Reader in another language," I have elsewhere said
of them; but doubtless a woman cannot be the judge. Let us see what
Browning, subtle as few other men, thought of our lucidity.

"Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her--
Next time, herself!--not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew;
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather."

So elusive, says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she
does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious--or, if conscious, blind
to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses,
_for fun_, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows
nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room!
How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And when
she tossed her hat off, or carefully put it on before the mirror . . .
if the glass did gleam, it was a trick of light; _she_ did not produce
it! For, conscious of this magic, she would lose it