For Gregory Wenner saw Between this passion and his failing thought, And gray hairs coming, fortune slip like sand. And saw his mind diffuse itself in worries, In longing for her: found himself at times Too much in need of drink, and shrank to see What wishes rose that death might take his wife, And let him marry Elenor Murray, cure His life with having her beside him, dreaming That somehow Elenor Murray could restore His will and vision, by her passion's touch, And mother instinct make him whole again. But if he could not have her for his wife, And since the girl absorbed him in this life Of separation which made longing greater, Just as it lacked the medium to discharge The great emotion it created, Wenner Caught up his shreds of strength to crush her out Of his life, told her so, when he had raised The money for her training. For he saw How ruin may overtake a man, and ruin Pass by the woman, whom the world would judge As ruined long ago. But look, he thought, I pity her, not for our sin, if it be, But that I have absorbed her life; and yet The girl is mastering life, while I fall down. She has absorbed me, if the wrong lies here. And thus his thought went round. And Elenor Murray Accepted what he said and went her way With words like these: "My love and prayers are yours While life is with us." Then she turned to study, And toiled each day till night brought such fatigue That sleep fell on her. Was it to forget? And meanwhile she embraced the faith and poured Her passion driven by a rapturous will Into religion, trod her path in silence, Save for a card at Christmas time for him, Sometimes a little message from some place Whereto her duty called her. Gregory Wenner Stands at the window of his desolate office, And looks out on his sixteen-story building Irrevocably lost this day. His mind runs back To that day in the Garden of the Gods, That night at Santa Cruz, and then his eyes Made piercing sharp by sorrow cleave the clay That lies upon the face of Elenor Murray, And see the flesh of her the worms have now. How strange, he thinks, to flit into this life Singing and radiant, to suffer, toil, To serve in the war, return to girlhood's scenes, To die, to be a memory for a day, Then be forgotten. O, this life of ours. Why is not God ashamed for graveyards, why So thoughtless of our passion he lets play This tragedy.