Then, while he spoke with hands there clasping mine, And eyes that tired mine own with so much light Their trembling lids were vext by feeble tears, Doretta came. But startled, seeing me, She only smiled; said: “Haydn, what! awake?— And you, Pauline?—You good have been, so good; Nor call’d me; no. How very kind in you! Why, after all, some little training thus Might make you like, perhaps, to be a nurse,— Or housekeeper.—To-day, how wreck’d it look’d, Your room! Our father just now came from there; So vex’d, you know.” I flush’d, and thought, at least, That she to speak of it had not been kind. And could have told her so, but check’d the words, And went my way; and sought my father first, And told him what the cause had been, and then I sought my room, and pray’d that I might know If it were well to tell my father too Of Haydn’s love; or tell my own to Haydn; Or if he loved me, since my sister’s words. If only he could know my soul in truth, I felt that I could suffer all things then; Could die, if so the veil about my heart Withdrawn could be, and show him how I loved. Alas, I did not know then, had not learn’d, That love may more endure than even death. XVIII. The sunset brought Doretta to my room; And she began, and chided me, and said: “How dared you talk! and what were Haydn’s words?— He lay so ill, with fever high, so high. He could but rave. How dared you lead him on? He worse may grow,—Who knows, Pauline?—may die; And all the cause may be your nursing him!— When will you learn to learn what you know not?” XIX. And then she told me such a long, sad tale, Of how great store she placed upon his life; And how they two had thought the self-same thing: She knew each inner chamber in his heart, And what key could unlock it; and she named First one and then another of our friends, Whom she could never love as him she loved. Then sigh’d she: “Ah, Pauline, had you explored The world about, with all its barren wastes, And found one little nook; and had you work’d And till’d it well, and form’d a garden there; And had you watch’d the plantlets grow until Their dainty bowers bent over you with shade, All sweet with bursting buds and carolling birds, What could you think of one who came and stript Your life of this, the thing that so you prized?— Alas, and what could I,—if any power Should wrest from me my Haydn, all that soil Where spring all hopes that bless my lonely hours, And make it sweet for me to live my life,— What could I think of her? Though you, Pauline, You have not known and tired of many men. You have not search’d, as I have, through the world”—