And Gregory Wenner shaken, Astonished and made mad with ecstasy Pressed her brown head against his breast and wept. And there at Santa Cruz they lived a week, Till Elenor Murray went to take her school, He to the north en route for home. Five years Had passed since then. And on this day poor Wenner Looks from a little office at his building Visibly leaning now, the building lost, The bonds foreclosed; this is the very day A court gives a receiver charge of it. And he, these several months reduced to deals In casual properties, in trivial trades, Hard pressed for money, has gone up and down Pursuing prospects, possibilities, Scanning each day financial sheets and looking For clues to lead to money. And he finds His strength and hope not what they were before. His wife is living on, no whit restored. And Gregory Wenner thinks, would they not say I killed myself because I lost my building, If I should kill myself, and leave a note That business worries drove me to the deed, My building this day taken, a receiver In charge of what I builded out of my dream. And yet he said to self, that would be false: It's Elenor Murray's death that makes this life So hard to bear, and thoughts of Elenor Murray Make life a torture. First that I had to live Without her as my wife, and next the fact That I have taken all her life's thought, ruined Her chance for home and marriage; that I have seen Elenor Murray struggle in the world, And go forth to the war with just the thought To serve, if it should kill her. Then his mind Ran over these five years when Elenor Murray Throughout gave such devotion, constant thought, Filled all his mind and heart, and kept her voice Singing or talking in his memory's ear, In absence with long letters, when together With passionate utterances of love. The girl Loved Gregory Wenner, but the girl had found A comfort for her spiritual solitude, And got a strength in taking Wenner's strength. For at the last one soul lives on another. And Elenor Murray could not live except She had a soul to live for, and a soul On which to pour her passion, taking back The passion of that soul in recompense. Gregory Wenner served her power and genius For giving and for taking so to live, Achieve and flame; and found them in some moods Somehow demoniac when his spirits sank, And drink was all that kept him on his feet. And so when Elenor Murray came to him And said this life of teaching was too much, Could not be longer borne, he thought the time Had come to end the hopeless love. He raised The money by the hardest means to pay Elenor Murray's training as a nurse, By this to set her free from teaching school, And then he set about to crush the girl Out of his life.