And while they talked, and Marian felt the worse For having missed the worst of all their wrongs, A visitor was ushered through the wards And paused among the talkers. ‘When he looked, It was as if he spoke, and when he spoke He sang perhaps,’ said Marian; ‘could she tell? She only knew’ (so much she had chronicled, As seraphs might, the making of the sun) ‘That he who came and spake, was Romney Leigh, And then, and there, she saw and heard him first.’ And when it was her turn to have the face Upon her,—all those buzzing pallid lips Being satisfied with comfort—when he changed To Marian, saying ‘And _you_? you’re going, where?’— She, moveless as a worm beneath a stone Which some one’s stumbling foot has spurned aside, Writhed suddenly, astonished with the light, And breaking into sobs cried, ‘Where I go? None asked me till this moment. Can I say Where _I_ go? when it has not seemed worth while To God himself, who thinks of every one, To think of me, and fix where I shall go?’ ‘So young,’ he gently asked her, ‘you have lost Your father and your mother?’ ‘Both,’ she said, ‘Both lost! my father was burnt up with gin Or ever I sucked milk, and so is lost. My mother sold me to a man last month, And so my mother’s lost, ’tis manifest. And I, who fled from her for miles and miles, As if I had caught sight of the fires of hell Through some wild gap, (she was my mother, sir) It seems I shall be lost too, presently, And so we end, all three of us.’ ‘Poor child!’ He said,—with such a pity in his voice, It soothed her more than her own tears,—‘poor child! ’Tis simple that betrayal by mother’s love Should bring despair of God’s too. Yet be taught; He’s better to us than many mothers are, And children cannot wander beyond reach Of the sweep of his white raiment. Touch and hold! And if you weep still, weep where John was laid While Jesus loved him.’ ‘She could say the words,’ She told me, ‘exactly as he uttered them A year back, ... since, in any doubt or dark, They came out like the stars, and shone on her With just their comfort. Common words, perhaps; The ministers in church might say the same; But _he_, he made the church with what he spoke,— The difference was the miracle,’ said she. Then catching up her smile to ravishment, She added quickly, ‘I repeat his words, But not his tones: can any one repeat The music of an organ, out of church? And when he said ‘poor child,’ I shut my eyes To feel how tenderly his voice broke through, As the ointment-box broke on the Holy feet To let out the rich medicative nard.’