“Her soul?” he said; “may be; but I, may be, Have never seen it.” “How?—this too!” I thought, “A slight is it?—or triumph that he vaunts?” He caught my feeling from my fever’d mien, And words confused and few; and, warming then, Made answer: “Norman, if I loved you less, I more might love, and more might spare myself. The thing my sister wrote, I deemed her whim; Could not conceive it true, yet can it be?— I swear, it staggers half one’s faith to find A man, devoted to the aims you claim, So little circumspect.” What meant he now? Could he believe that I had form’d a plan To woo his Edith, knowing she was his?— And could my sleepless nights, my troubled heart, My prayerful deeds, my nature that he knew, Be so misjudged, without some fault in him?— “So little circumspect in what?” I ask’d. And then with words that could but anger me, “In what but choice of company?” he said; “No more you think of study, duty, church, But waste the whole day long with one like this!— Nay, check me not. I understand my words.— This actress, though right artless in her way, This actress here, would play”— “With me!” I cried; “This ‘actress!’” and I know not what I said; But yet recall what kept him forcing in, “You err!”—“You do me wrong!”—“You know her not!”— Wild words, the which he ended, saying then: “Not such am I as you profess to be; But had you common-sense, no piety, You might perceive a farce, if not a fault: A broad church yours will be then, when your mate, Attracting toward the stage by charms you lack, Will draw the sinner, while you draw the saint.” XXIX. Struck blind, I scarcely could have felt more stunn’d. Was this the truth? An actress would she be? Why had that sister of his not told me this?— “Not told you this?” cried Elbert; “What? not told? Ay, ay, I see.—She hoped that love, perchance— It is a woman’s balm for every ill— Might woo this Edith from her present life. She knows her not.—And you—have you told her?— Does Edith know your plans?” “She must have known”— I answer’d back; and then I check’d myself. Did not she blush to hear that Elbert came?— For fear was it, lest he should tell the truth?— To me, her friend? to me, deceived, her dupe? To me, whose love she might have known, yet knew That all that she had seem’d was not her all?— If she had meant deception, could my love Survive the test? Those watching death-beds, mark That souls, when dying, ere above they spring, Breathe deep, then pass away. And so with minds, When come the deadliest woes. Down deep in thought, I scarce had deem’d that aught from hell could roil Such dregs of bitterness long undisturb’d. XXX.