And so at last the girl who now sits gazing up at her will come to old age--will retire apart with the hoarded memories of her heart, and reconstruct the past until the whole "grandly fronts for once her soul" . . . and then, the gleam of yet another morning shall break; it will be like the ending of a dream, when "Death, with the might of his sunbeam, Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes." With that great utterance her voice changed like a bird's. The music began again, the words grew indistinguishable . . . with a snap the charm broke, and the huntsman, "starting as if from a nap," realised afresh that the lady was being bewitched, sprang from the balcony to the ground, and hurried round to the portal. . . . In another minute he would have entered: "When the door opened, and more than mortal Stood, with a face where to my mind centred All beauties I ever saw or shall see, The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy. She was so different, happy and beautiful, I felt at once that all was best" . . . And he felt, too, that he must do whatever she commanded. But there was, in fact, no commanding. Looking on the beauty that had invested her, "the brow's height and the breast's expanding," he knew that he was hers to live and die, and so he needed not words to find what she wanted--like a wild creature, he knew by instinct what this freed wild creature's bidding was. . . . He went before her to the stable; she followed; the old woman, silent and alone, came last--sunk back into her former self, "Like a blade sent home to its scabbard." He saddled the very palfrey that had brought the little Duchess to the castle--the palfrey he had patted as he had led it, thus winning a smile from her. And he couldn't help thinking that she remembered it too, and knew that he would do anything in the world for her. But when he began to saddle his own nag ("of Berold's begetting")--not meaning to be obtrusive--she stopped him by a finger's lifting, and a small shake of the head. . . . Well, he lifted her on the palfrey and set the Gipsy behind her--and then, in a broken voice, he murmured that he was ready whenever God should please that she needed him. . . . And she looked down "With a look, a look that placed a crown on me," and felt in her bosom and dropped into his hand . . . not a purse! If it had been a purse of silver ("or gold that's worse") he would have gone home, kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned himself--but it was not a purse; it was a little plait of hair, such as friends make for each other in a convent: "This, see, which at my breast I wear, Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment) And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment. And then--and then--to cut short--this is idle, These are feelings it is not good to foster. I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle, And the palfrey bounded--and so we lost her." + + + + +