If earnest will, devoted love, employed In youth like mine, would fail to raise me up,— As two strong arms will always raise a child To a fruit hung overhead? she sighed and sighed ... ‘That could not be,’ she feared. ‘You take a pink, You dig about its roots and water it, And so improve it to a garden-pink, But will not change it to a heliotrope, The kind remains. And then, the harder truth— This Romney Leigh, so rash to leap a pale, So bold for conscience, quick for martyrdom, Would suffer steadily and never flinch, But suffer surely and keenly, when his class Turned shoulder on him for a shameful match, And set him up as nine-pin in their talk, To bowl him down with jestings.’—There, she paused; And when I used the pause in doubting that We wronged him after all in what we feared— ‘Suppose such things should never touch him, more In his high conscience, (if the things should be,) Than, when the queen sits in an upper room, The horses in the street can spatter her!’— A moment, hope came,—but the lady closed That door and nicked the lock, and shut it out, Observing wisely that, ‘the tender heart Which made him over-soft to a lower class, Could scarcely fail to make him sensitive ‘To a higher,—how they thought, and what they felt.’ ‘Alas, alas,’ said Marian, rocking slow The pretty baby who was near asleep, The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,— ‘She made it clear, too clear—I saw the whole! And yet who knows if I had seen my way Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear, Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this, Had set her own house all a-fire for me, To light me forwards? Leaning on my face Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will, She told me tenderly, (as when men come To a bedside to tell people they must die) ‘She knew of knowledge,—ay, of knowledge, knew, That Romney Leigh had loved _her_ formerly; And _she_ loved _him_, she might say, now the chance Was past ... but that, of course, he never guessed,— For something came between them ... something thin As a cobweb ... catching every fly of doubt To hold it buzzing at the window-pane And help to dim the daylight. Ah, man’s pride Or woman’s—which is greatest? most averse To brushing cobwebs? Well, but she and he Remained fast friends; it seemed not more than so, Because he had bound his hands and could not stir: An honourable man, if somewhat rash; And she, not even for Romney, would she spill A blot ... as little even as a tear ... Upon his marriage-contract,—not to gain A better joy for two than came by that! For, though I stood between her heart and heaven, She loved me wholly.’ Did I laugh or curse? I think I sate there silent, hearing all, Ay, hearing double,—Marian’s tale, at once,