So far young Manton. She for whom I came, Griselda's self, sweet soul, in her new shame Essayed awhile to hide from me the truth Of this last hap of her belated youth, Her disillusion with her graceless lover. She made sad cloaks for him which could not cover His great unworthiness and her despair, All with a frightened half-maternal air, Most pitiful and touching. To my plea, Urging her home, she answered mournfully, That she was bound now to her way of life, And owed herself no less than as his wife To him she had chosen out of all mankind. 'Twas better to be foolish, even blind, If he had faults, so she could serve him still-- And this had been her promise and her will. She would not hear of duties owed elsewhere: What was she to Lord L., or he to her? I need not speak of it. And yet she clung To my protecting presence in her wrong; And once, when Manton's jibes made bitterer play, Implored me with appealing eyes to stay. And so I lingered on. Those autumn days, Spent with Griselda in the woodland ways Of Meudon with her lover, or alone, When his mad fancies carried him to town, Remain to me an unsubstantial act Of dreaming fancy, rather than the fact Of any waking moment in my past, The sweetest, saddest, and with her the last-- For suddenly they ended. We had been One Sunday for a jaunt upon the Seine, We two--in Manton's absence, now prolonged To a third night--and in a steamboat, thronged With idle bourgeois folk, whom the last glory Of a late autumn had sent forth in foray To Passy and St. Cloud, from stage to stage, Had made with heavy souls our pilgrimage; And homeward turning and with little zest, The fair day done, to love's deserted nest Had come with lagging feet and weary eyes, Expectant still of some new dark surprise, When the blow fell unsparing on her head, Already by what fortunes buffeted.