"And so to make As nearly as might be a marriage, father, I took--but let me tell you: I had thought His wife might die at any time, so thinking During these years I had bought bridal things; A veil, embroideries, silk lingerie. And I took to our room my negligee, Boudoir cap, satin slippers, so to make All beautiful as we were married, father. How have I sinned? I cannot deem it wrong. Do I not soil my soul with penitence, And smut this loveliness with penitence? Can I regret my work, nor take a hurt Upon my very soul? How keep it clean Confessing what I did (if I thought so) As evil and unclean?" The devil again Entered with casuistry, as you perceive. And so to make an end, I said to her, You must bring to this sacrament a heart Contrite and humble, promise me beside To sin no more. The case is in your hands, You can confess with lips, deny with heart, God only knows, I don't, it's on your soul To speak the truth or lie to me. Confess And I'll absolve you.--For in truth my heart Was touched by what she said, her lovely voice. But now the story deepened. For she said, I have not told you all. And she renewed: "Suppose you pack your trunk and have your lunch, Go to the station, but no train arrives, And there you wait and wait, until you're hungry, And nothing to do but wait, no place to lunch, You cannot leave the station, lest the train Should come while you are gone. Well, so it was, The weeks went by, and still we were not called. And I had closed my old life, sat and waited The time of leaving to begin new life. And after I had sinned with my first lover, Parted from him, said farewell, ended it, Could not go back to him, at least could think Of no way to return that would not dull The hour we lived together, look, this man, This second lover looks me up again And overwhelms me with a flaming passion. It seemed he had thought over what I was, Become all fire for me. He came to me, And said, I love you, love you, looked at me, And I could see the love-light in his eyes, The light that woman knows. Well, I was weak, Lonely and bored. He stirred my love besides; And then a curious thought came in my brain: The spirit is not found save through the flesh, O holy father, and I thought to self, Bring, as you may, these trials close together In point of time and see where spirit is, Where flesh directs to spirit most. And so I went with him again, and found in truth I loved him, he was mine and I was his, We two were for each other, my old lover Was just my love's beginning, not my love Fully and wholly, rapturously, this man Body and spirit harmonized with me. I found him through the love of my old lover, And knew by contrast, memory of the two And this immediate comparison Of spirits and of bodies, that this man Who left me, whom I turned from to the first,