Rest and solace have departed: winter is come--to all. She walks alone on the beach; one may do that, "on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, for miles";[258:1] and broods once more. She figures him beside her; they are speaking frankly of her pain. She "will be quiet." . . . Piteous phrase of all unquiet women! She will be quiet; she will "reason why he is wrong." Well for her that the talk is but a fancied one; she would not win far with such a preamble, were it real! It is thus that in almost every word we can trace the destined failure of this loving woman. . . . She begins her "reasoning." "You wanted my love--is that much true? And so I did love, so I do: What has come of it all along? I took you--how could I otherwise? For a world to me, and more; For all, love greatens and glorifies Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes, In what was mere earth before. Yes, earth--yes, mere ignoble earth! Now do I mis-state, mistake? Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth? Expect all harvest, dread no dearth, Seal my sense up for your sake? Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed! You were just weak earth, I knew": --and then, pursuing, she sums him up as we saw at the beginning of our study. Well for her, I say again, that this is but a fancied talk! And since it is, we can accord her a measure of wisdom. For she _has_ been wise in one thing: she has not "wronged his weakness and called it worth"--that memorable phrase, so Browningesque! She has "seen through" him, yet she loves him. Thus far, then, kind and wise in her great passion. . . . But she should _forget_ that she has seen through him--she should keep that vision in the background, not hold it ever in her sight. And now herself begins to see that this is where she has not been wise. She took him for hers, just as he was--and did not he, thus accepted, find her his? Has she not watched all that was as yet developed in him, and waited patiently, wonderingly, for the more to come? "Well, and if none of these good things came, What did the failure prove? The man was my whole world, all the same." _That_ is the fault in her: "That I do love, watch too long, And wait too well, and weary and wear; And 'tis all an old story, and my despair Fit subject for some new song." She has shown him too much love and indulgence and hope implied in the indulgence: this was the wrong way. The "bond" has been felt--and such "light, light love" as his has wings to fly at the mere suspicion of a bond. He has grown weary of her "wisdom"; pleasure is his aim in life, and _that_ is always ready to "turn up next in a laughing eye." . . . So the songs have said and will say for all time--the new songs for the old despair.