n."

"For what?" I said.

Criseyde folded her hands and leaned her cheek sidelong upon the
stone.

"For what?" I repeated.

"For what but idle questions?" she said; "for a traveller's vanity
that deems looking love-boys into a woman's eyes her sweeter
entertainment than all the heroes of Troy. Oh, for a house of nought
to be at peace in! Oh, gooseish swan! Oh, brittle vows! Tell me,
Voyager, is it not so?--that men are merely angry boys with beards;
and women--repeat not, ye who know! Never yet set I these steadfast
eyes on a man that would not steal the moon for taper--would she but
come down." She turned an arch face to me: "And what is to be
faithful?"

"I?" said I--"'to be faithful?'"

"It is," she said, "to rise and never set, O sun of utter weariness!
It is to kindle and never be quenched, O fretting fire of midsummer!
It is to be snared and always sing, O shrilling bird of dulness! It is
to come, not go; smile, not sigh; wake, never sleep. Couldst _thou_
love so many nots to a silk string?"

"What, then, is to change,... to be fickle?" I said.

"Ah! to be fickle," she said, "is showers after drought, seas after
sand; to cry, unechoed; to be thirsty, the pitcher broken. And--ask
now this pitiless darkness of the eyes!--to be remembered though
Lethe flows between. Nay, you shall watch even hope away ere another
comes like me to mope and sigh, and play at swords with Memory."

She rose to her feet and drew her hands across her face, and smiling,
sighed deeply. And I saw how inscrutable and lovely she must ever seem
to eyes scornful of mean men's idolatries.

"And you will embark again," she said softly; "and in how small a ship
on seas so mighty! And whither next will fate entice you, to what new
sorrows?"

"Who knows?" I said. "And to what further peace?"

She laughed lightly. "Speak not of mockeries," she said, and fell
silent.

She seemed to be thinking quickly and deeply; for even though I did
not turn to her, I could see in imagination the restless sparkling of
her eyes, the stillness of her ringless hands. Then suddenly she
turned.

"Stranger," she said, drawing her finger softly along the cold stone
of the bench, "there yet remain a few bright hours to morning. Who
knows, seeing that felicity is with the bold, did I cast off into the
sea--who knows whereto I'd come! 'Tis but a little way to being
happy--a touch of the hand, a lifting of the brows, a shuddering
silence. Had I but man's cou