more. She is passing
the great house of the First Happy One, so soon rejected in her game of
make-believe! If now she could know what part the dream-Pippa might have
taken on herself. . . . But she does not know, and, lingering for a
moment by the step, she bends to pick a pansy-blossom.

The pair in the shrub-house have been arrested in full tide of passion
by her song. It strikes on Sebald with the force of a warning from
above--

"God's in his heaven! Do you hear that? Who spoke?
You, you spoke!"--

but she, contemptuously--

". . . Oh, that little ragged girl!
She must have rested on the step: we give them
But this one holiday the whole year round.
Did you ever see our silk-mills--their inside?
_There are ten silk-mills now belong to you!_"

Enervated by the interruption, she calls sharply to the singer to be
quiet--but Pippa does not hear, and Ottima then orders Sebald to call,
for _his_ voice will be sure to carry.

No: her hour is past. He is ruled now by that voice from heaven.
Terribly he turns upon her--

"Go, get your clothes on--dress those shoulders!
. . . Wipe off that paint! I hate you"--

and as she flashes back her "Miserable!" his hideous repulse sinks to a
yet more hideous contemplation of her--

"My God, and she is emptied of it now!
Outright now!--how miraculously gone
All of the grace--had she not strange grace once?
Why, the blank cheek hangs listless as it likes,
No purpose holds the features up together,
Only the cloven brow and puckered chin
Stay in their places: and the very hair
That seemed to have a sort of life in it,
Drops, a dead web!"

Poignant in its authenticity is her sole, piteous answer--

". . . Speak to me--not of me!"

But he relentlessly pursues the dread analysis of baffled passion's
aspect--

"That round great full-orbed face, where not an angle
Broke the delicious indolence--all broken!"

Once more that cry breaks from her--

"To me--not of me!"

but soon the natural anger against his insolence possesses her; she
whelms him with a torrent of recrimination. Coward and ingrate he is,
beggar, her slave--

". . . a fawning, cringing lie,
A lie that walks and eats and drinks!"

--while he, as in some horrible trance, continues his cold dissection--

". . . My God!
Those mo