“You surely would not mean,” she ask’d and paused, “That you could throw aside your hopes? your vows? Your life-work?—seek enjoyment?” “Ah,” said I, “Enjoyment is the man’s most heartfelt praise To Him that fram’d his being. What should I, A child of God, do here but live God’s life?— Which is not now, nor then, but evermore. My soul must thrive the best, as best I make My now, eternal; my eternal, now. So when a storm comes, let me bar it out; And, braced against the present ill, grow strong; And when the sunshine, let me open wide To that which makes all nature grow more sweet. Thus, realizing in my earthly state The aim of heaven, why do I praise Him less Whose life is that of heaven, than those who wear The guises of that slattern of the soul, Asceticism, shuffling toward far good, Slipshod and snivelling?”— “Now, that goes too far!” Cried Grace. “Do I do this?—Ah, but I know A man so moody!—Own it. Were I you, I just would set to work. To work off whims, The best way, say they, is to work them out; One hand at work is worth ten heads that shirk.” “You find me moody!” sigh’d I; “and complain; Deem moods not meet. Oh, no they prove we feel!— Nor pious they: they prove we think!” L. And yet, I could but blame myself; so fain to draw This gentler soul from her still streams of life Toward waves thus fiercely dash’d about my own! You know, though, how it is: our thought, like light, Opposed, will vaunt itself; and brightest play, Glanced off from things it does not penetrate. So, more to shock her than for sympathy, My thought play’d round the surface of her life: It had been shaped so—to so smooth a thing— I burn’d to warp it of complacency. Oft, though unconscious of the least mistruth, I feign’d a fall in fancied depths of ill, And mock’d that I might hear her call me thence; And learn’d therein to envy some the rake. For what a charm it were to hear—not so? That is, if one were vicious, through and through— Such pleas for love from lips that aye were pure? The very depth of one’s unworthiness Would whet such relish for a thing so strange! LI. But weeks and months went by, in which she fill’d A certain void in life; and, every eve, We parted for the night made better friends. Once, ending thus, the pleasures of the day, We chanced upon a path where, sauntering too, Lo, Elbert enter’d and encounter’d us. At first scarce friendly, after divers tests, And in the new light of my life with her, His older love return’d with oldest warmth: “To think so thin a fancy,” he exclaim’d, “As last I found you folded in, should screen Our genuine hearts, a moment, each from each!” LII.