“Doretta, nay; but stop,” I cried again, “Put by the knife!—and if you will, then I— Then I and Haydn will not”— “You?” she laugh’d, “And Haydn?—Humph!—Who cares what you may do?— But ah—if planning thus to vent your thought, Could I have chosen, eh, a shrewder way?— Ha! ha!—to murder me, or you, or him! It starts all madness, yes, to tap your moods. But go in, simpleton,—the rain has come,— And trust the knife to me. It meant no harm Except to this beheaded cabbage here.” And, shaking this aloft, she flitted off, While I walk’d vaguely back, to find my room Still sadder than before. I could not think That my surmise was just; yet could not think That all her strange demean was meaningless; To this day yet, I pause and puzzle oft That scene to ponder; then, to moods confused, It seem’d the final blow, unsettling all. XXXIII. What comes as direful as the direful night A spirit spends in trouble?—fill’d with fears That sleep may bring distressful nightmares now; And now, that morn may come before we sleep; Until, betwixt the two, distracted quite, Awake one dreams, and dreaming seems awake, And evermore does weep at what he dreams, And then does weep that he should dream no more. In darkest fancies all that night I lay, A murderess, guilty of Doretta’s death. XXXIV. Alas! and after those long hours of woe, More woe awaited me when morning came. Our Haydn’s bed-worn frame, so frail before, New-rent by throes of passion yesterday, Once more lay prostrate in the arms of death: So thought we all: I, ere the fact I heard, Could feel its cold shade creeping over me. The shutters closed, the silence everywhere, The very coffin of our lively home, The sadden’d looks, the voices all suppress’d, The kind physician’s face, that wore no smile,— I did not need to ask the cause of all. I sought and saw my Haydn. How his face Gazed forth, a ghost’s, against my sense of guilt! For I, perhaps, had made his last thought sin; And I, perhaps, had lured him toward his doom. I thought then of my father, of the priest, What they of love had said, of genuine love, Such love as Christ had had. I ask’d myself If there was naught that I could sacrifice? XXXV. Ah, friend, do you recall that afternoon When first we met? How sad yet sweet it seem’d! So many kindly sisters with me spake, And for me prayed, and when the dusk had come, And hardly any eye but God’s could see, We knelt before the altar; and I rose, Content if like that light before the shrine Within my heart one light alone could burn; Though all the earth beside might loom as dark As those chill, shadowy chapels down the aisle.