ay-hearted, worldly wise, he sees
This marriage makes me the Tsar's protege,
And opens every door to preference.

SHE.

Think while I think. There surely is some key
Unlocks the labyrinth, could we but find it.
Nastasia!

HE.

What! beg life of her? Not I.

SHE.

Beg love. She is a woman, young, perhaps
Untouched as yet of this too poisonous air.
Were she told all, would she not pity us?
For if she love you, as I think she must,
Would not some generous impulse stir in her,
Some latent, unsuspected spark illume?
How love thrills even commonest girl-clay,
Ennobling it an instant, if no more!
You said that she is proud; then touch her pride,
And turn her into marble with the touch.
But yet the gentler passion is the stronger.
Go to her, tell her, in some tenderest phrase
That will not hurt too much--ah, but 'twill hurt!--
Just how your happiness lies in her hand
To make or mar for all time; hint, not say,
Your heart is gone from you, and you may find--

HE.

A casemate in St. Peter and St. Paul
For, say, a month; then some Siberian town.
Not this way lies escape. At my first word
That sluggish Tartar blood would turn to fire
In every vein.

SHE.

How blindly you read her,
Or any woman! Yes, I know. I grant
How small we often seem in our small world
Of trivial cares and narrow precedents--
Lacking that wide horizon stretched for men--
Capricious, spiteful, frightened at a mouse;
But when it comes to suffering mortal pangs,
The weakest of us measures pulse with you.

HE.

Yes, you, not she. If she were at your height!
But there's no martyr wrapt in HER rose flesh.
There should have been; for Nature gave you both
The self-same purple for your eyes and hair,
The self-same Southern music to your lips,
Fashioned you both, as 'twere, in the same mould,
Yet failed to put the soul in one of you!
I know her wilful--her light head quite turned
In this court atmosphere of flatteries;
A Moscow beauty, petted and spoiled there,
And since spoiled here; as soft as swan's down now,
With words like honey melting from the comb,
But being crossed, vindictive, cruel, cold.
I fancy her, between two rosy smiles,
Saying, "Poor fellow, in the Nertchinsk mines!"
That is the sum of her.

SHE.

You know her not.
Count Sergiu