Can I write to _him_ A half truth? can I keep my own soul blind To the other half, ... the worse? What are our souls, If still, to run on straight a sober pace Nor start at every pebble or dead leaf, They must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppress Six tenths of the road? Confront the truth, my soul! And oh, as truly as that was Marian’s face, The arms of that same Marian clasped a thing ... Not hid so well beneath the scanty shawl, I cannot name it now for what it was. A child. Small business has a cast-away Like Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives, At which the gentlest she grows arrogant And says, ‘my child.’ Who’ll find an emerald ring On a beggar’s middle finger, and require More testimony to convict a thief? A child’s too costly for so mere a wretch; She filched it somewhere; and it means, with her, Instead of honour, blessing, ... merely shame. I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is, Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track: I saw her here, in Paris, ... and her child. She put away your love two years ago, But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then; And, now that you’ve forgot her utterly As any last year’s annual, in whose place You’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen, I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this To make you wholly easy—she’s not dead, But only ... damned.’ Stop there: I go too fast; I’m cruel like the rest,—in haste to take The first stir in the arras for a rat, And set my barking, biting thoughts upon’t. —A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour’s sick And asked her, ‘Marian, carry out my child In this Spring air,’—I punish her for that? Or say, the child should hold her round the neck For good child-reasons, that he liked it so And would not leave her—she had winning ways— I brand her therefore, that she took the child? Not so. I will not write to Romney Leigh. For now he’s happy,—and she may indeed Be guilty,—and the knowledge of her fault Would draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days Are not so fine they cannot bear the rain, And who, moreover, having seen her face, Must see it again, ... _will_ see it, by my hopes Of one day seeing heaven too. The police Shall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil; We’ll dig this Paris to its catacombs But certainly we’ll find her, have her out, And save her, if she will or will not—child Or no child,—if a child, then one to save!