And thus I found them, at the angry noon Of their "red month," the next to honeymoon: Two silent revellers at a loveless feast, Scared by hate's morning breaking in their east-- A dawn which was of penance and despair, With pleasure's ghost to fill the vacant chair. I took it, and was welcomed rapturously, As a far sail by shipwrecked souls at sea, An opportune deliverer, timely sent To break the autumn of their discontent, And give a pretext to their need grown sore Of issue from joys dead by any door. Manton, all confidential from the first, Told me the tale of his last sins and worst, As meriting a sympathy not less Than the best actions virtuous men confess. He was overwhelmed with women and with debt-- Women who loved him, bills which must be met. What could he do? Her ladyship was mad-- It was her fault, not his, this escapade. He had warned her from the first, and as a friend, That all such frolics had a serious end, And that to leave her home was the worst way A woman would who wanted to be gay. "For look," said he, "we men, who note these things, And how the unthinking flutterers burn their wings, Know that a woman, be she what she will, The fairest, noblest, most adorable, Dowered in her home with all seraphic charms, Whom heaven itself might envy in your arms, A paragon of pleasure undenied At her own chaste respectable fireside, Becomes, what shall I say, when she steps down From the high world of her untouched renown-- A something differing in no serious mood From the sad rest of the light sisterhood: Perhaps indeed more troublesome than these, Because she keenlier feels the agonies: A wounded soul, who has not even the wit To hide its hurt and make a jest of it; A maid of Astolat, launched in her barge, A corpse on all the world, a _femme à charge_." "'Tis not," he argued, "our poor human sins That make us what we are when shame begins, But the world pointing at our naked state: Then we are shocked and humbled at our fate, Silent and shamed in all we honour most-- For what is virtue but the right to boast? A married woman's love, three weeks from home, Is the absurdest thing in Christendom, Dull as a _ménage_ in the demi-monde And dismaller far by reason of the bond. All this I told my lady ere we went, But warning wasted is on sentiment. You see the net result here in one word, A crying woman and a lover bored."