ur brother's face?
Compelled myself--if not to speak untruth,
Yet to disguise, to shun, to put aside
The truth, as--what had e'er prevailed on me
Save you to venture? Have I gained at last
Your brother, the one scarer of your dreams,
And waking thoughts' sole apprehension too?
Does a new life, like a young sunrise, break
On the strange unrest of our night, confused
With rain and stormy flaw--and will you see
No dripping blossoms, no fire-tinted drops
On each live spray, no vapour steaming up,
And no expressless glory in the East?
When I am by you, to be ever by you,
When I have won you and may worship you,
Oh, Mildred, can you say "this will not be"?

MILDRED. Sin has surprised us, so will punishment.

MERTOUN. No--me alone, who sinned alone!

MILDRED. The night
You likened our past life to--was it storm
Throughout to you then, Henry?

MERTOUN. Of your life
I spoke--what am I, what my life, to waste
A thought about when you are by me?--you
It was, I said my folly called the storm
And pulled the night upon. 'Twas day with me--
Perpetual dawn with me.

MILDRED. Come what, come will,
You have been happy: take my hand!

MERTOUN [after a pause]. How good
Your brother is! I figured him a cold--
Shall I say, haughty man?

MILDRED. They told me all.
I know all.

MERTOUN. It will soon be over.

MILDRED. Over?
Oh, what is over? what must I live through
And say, "'tis over"? Is our meeting over?
Have I received in presence of them all
The partner of my guilty love--with brow
Trying to seem a maiden's brow--with lips
Which make believe that when they strive to form
Replies to you and tremble as they strive,
It is the nearest ever they approached
A stranger's... Henry, yours that stranger's... lip--
With cheek that looks a virgin's, and that is...
Ah God, some prodigy of thine will stop
This planned piece of deliberate wickedness
In its birth even! some fierce leprous spot
Will mar the brow's dissimulating! I
Shall murmur no smooth speeches got by heart,
But, frenzied, pour forth all our woeful story,
The love, the