Then she lured him on, Played on his brain as a musician plays Upon the lute. 'Forgive me, dear Sir Lewis, If I am grown too gay for widowhood. But I have pondered for a long, long time On all these matters. I know the world was right; And Spain was right, Sir Lewis. Yes, and you, You too, were right; and my poor husband wrong. You see I knew his mind so very well. I knew his every gesture, every smile. I lived with him. I think I died with him. It is a strange thing, marriage. For my soul (As if myself were present in this flesh) Beside him, slept in his grey prison-cell On that last dreadful dawn. I heard the throng Murmuring round the scaffold far away; And, with the smell of sawdust in my nostrils, I woke, bewildered as himself, to see That tall black-cassocked figure by his bed. I heard the words that made him understand: _The Body of our Lord--take and eat this!_ I rolled the small sour flakes beneath my tongue With him. I caught, with him, the gleam of tears, Far off, on some strange face of sickly dread. _The Blood_--and the cold cup was in my hand, Cold as an axe-heft washed with waterish red. I heard his last poor cry to wife and child.-- Could any that heard forget it?--_My true God, Hold you both in His arms, both in His arms._ And then--that last poor wish, a thing to raise A smile in some. I have smiled at it myself A thousand times. "_Give me my pipe_," he said, "_My old Winchester clay, with the long stem, And half an hour alone. The crowd can wait. They have not waited half so long as I._" And then, O then, I know what soft blue clouds, What wavering rings, fragrant ascending wreaths Melted his prison walls to a summer haze, Through which I think he saw the little port Of Budleigh Salterton, like a sea-bird's nest Among the Devon cliffs--the tarry quay Whence in his boyhood he had flung a line For bass or whiting-pollock. I remembered (Had he not told me, on some summer night, His arm about my neck, kissing my hair) He used to sit there, gazing out to sea; Fish, and for what? Not all for what he caught And handled; but for rainbow-coloured things, The water-drops that jewelled his thin line, Flotsam and jetsam of the sunset-clouds; While the green water, gurgling through the piles, Heaving and sinking, helped him to believe The fast-bound quay a galleon plunging out Superbly for Cathay. There would he sit Listening, a radiant boy, child of the sea, Listening to some old seaman's glowing tales, His grey eyes rich with pictures--