Has quite got over that unfortunate ... Ah, ah ... I know it moved you. Tender-heart! You took a liking to the wretched girl. Perhaps you thought the marriage suitable, Who knows? a poet hankers for romance, And so on. As for Romney Leigh, ’tis sure He never loved her,—never. By the way, You have not heard of _her_ ...? quite out of sight, And out of saving? lost in every sense?’ She might have gone on talking half-an-hour, And I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think, As a garden-statue a child pelts with snow For pretty pastime. Every now and then I put in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I scarce knew why; The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls, And so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in; ‘What penance takes the wretch who interrupts The talk of charming women? I, at last, Must brave it. Pardon, Lady Waldemar! The lady on my arm is tired, unwell, And loyally I’ve promised she shall say No harder word this evening, than ... goodnight; The rest her face speaks for her.’—Then we went. And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair ... now could I but unloose my soul! We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room. The charming woman there— This reckoning up and writing down her talk Affects me singularly. How she talked To pain me! woman’s spite!—You wear steel-mail; A woman takes a housewife from her breast, And plucks the delicatest needle out As ’twere a rose, and pricks you carefully ’Neath nails, ’neath eyelids, in your nostrils,—say, A beast would roar so tortured,—but a man, A human creature, must not, shall not flinch, No, not for shame. What vexes, after all, Is just that such as she, with such as I, Knows how to vex. Sweet heaven, she takes me up As if she had fingered me and dog-eared me And spelled me by the fireside, half a life! She knows my turns, my feeble points.—What then? The knowledge of a thing implies the thing; Of course, she found _that_ in me, she saw _that_, Her pencil underscored _this_ for a fault, And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close! And crush that beetle in the leaves. O heart, At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest, And call it self-defence because we are soft.