I'm home at last. How long were you asleep? I startled you. The time? It's midnight past. Put on your slippers and your robe, my dear, And make some coffee for me--what a night! Yes, tell you? I shall tell you everything. I must tell someone, and a wife should know The workings of a governor's mind--no one Could guess what turned the scale to save this man Who would have died to-morrow, but for me. That's fine. This coffee helps me. As I said This night has been a trial. Well, you know I told these lawyers they could come at eight, And so they came. A seasoned lawyer one, The other young and radical, both full Of sentiment of some sort. And there you sit, And do not say a word of disapproval. You smile, which means you sun yourself within The power I have, and yet do you approve? This man committed brutal murder, did A nameless horror; now he's saved from death. The father and the mother of the girl, The neighborhood, perhaps, in which she lived Will roar against me, think that I was bought, Or used by someone I'm indebted to In politics. Oh no! It's really funny, Since it is simpler than such things as these. And no one, saving you, shall know the secret. For there I sat and didn't say a word To indicate, betray my thought; not when The thing came out that moved me. Let them read The doctor's affidavits, that this man Was crazy when he killed the girl, and read The transcript of the evidence on the trial. They read and talked. At last the younger lawyer, For sometime still, kept silent by the other, Pops out with something, reads an affidavit, As foreign to the matter as a story Of melodrama color on the screen, Which still contained a sentence that went home; I felt my mind turn like a turn-table, And click as when the switchman kicks the tongue Of steel into the slot that holds the table. And from my mind the engine, that's the problem, Puffed, puffed and moved away, out on the track, And disappeared upon its business. How Is that for metaphor? Your coffee, dear, Stirs up my fancy. But to tell the rest, If my face changed expression, or my eye Betrayed my thought, then I have no control Of outward seeming. For they argued on An hour or so thereafter. And I asked Re-reading of the transcript where this man Told of his maniac passion, of the night He killed the girl, the doctors' testimony I had re-read, and let these lawyers think My interest centered there, and my decision Was based upon such matters, and at last The penalty commuted. When in truth I tell you I had let the fellow hang For all of this, except that I took fire Because of something in this affidavit Irrelevant to the issue, reaching me In something only relevant to me. O, well, all life is such. Our great decisions Flame out of sparks, where roaring fires before, Not touching our combustibles wholly failed To flame or light us.