‘So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay,’ I cried, more angry that she melted me, ‘We make henceforth a cushion of our faults To sit and practise easy virtues on? I thought a child was given to sanctify A woman,—set her in the sight of all The clear-eyed Heavens, a chosen minister To do their business and lead spirits up The difficult blue heights. A woman lives, Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good Through being a mother?... then she’s none! although She damps her baby’s cheeks by kissing them, As we kill roses.’ ‘Kill! O Christ,’ she said, And turned her wild sad face from side to side With most despairing wonder in it—‘What, What have you in your souls against me then, All of you? am I wicked, do you think? God knows me, trusts me with the child! but you, You think me really wicked?’ ‘Complaisant,’ I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done, Because of certain profits,—which is wrong Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left The pure place and the noble heart, to take The hand of a seducer’.... ‘Whom? whose hand? I took the hand of’.... Springing up erect, And lifting up the child at full arm’s length, As if to bear him like an oriflamme Unconquerable to armies of reproach,— ‘By _him_’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls, By those blue eyes no woman born could dare A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath, That if I left that Heart, to lighten it, The blood of mine was still, except for grief! No cleaner maid than I was, took a step To a sadder end,—no matron-mother now Looks backward to her early maidenhood Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily: And if I lie so, ... if, being fouled in will And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust, I dared to bid this angel take my part, ... Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven, Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak: He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’’s your word? Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France? Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws, Seduce it into carrion? So with me. I was not ever, as you say, seduced, But simply, murdered.’ There she paused, and sighed, With such a sigh as drops from agony To exhaustion,—sighing while she let the babe Slide down upon her bosom from her arms, And all her face’s light fell after him, Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank, And sate upon the bedside with the child.