Sad and vague were my thoughts, and full of fear was the silence; And, when he turned to speak at last, I trembled to hear him, Feeling he now must speak of his love, and his life and its secret,-- Now that the narrowing chances had left but that cruel conclusion, Else the life-long ache of a love and a trouble unuttered. Better, my feebleness pleaded, the dreariest doubt that had vexed me, Than my life left nothing, not even a doubt to console it; But, while I trembled and listened, his broken words crumbled to silence, And, as though some touch of fate had thrilled him with warning, Suddenly from me he turned. Our gondola slipped from the shadow Under a ship lying near, and glided into the moonlight, Where, in its brightest lustre, another gondola rested. _I_ saw two lovers there, and he, in the face of the woman, Saw what has made him mine, my own beloved, forever! Mine!--but through _what_ tribulation, and awful confusion of spirit! Tears that I think of with smiles, and sighs I remember with laughter, Agonies full of absurdity, keen, ridiculous anguish, Ending in depths of blissful shame, and heavenly transports! III. White, and estranged as a man who has looked on a spectre, he mutely Sank to the place at my side, nor while we returned to the city Uttered a word of explaining, or comment, or comfort, but only, With his good-night, incoherently craved my forgiveness and patience, Parted, and left me to spend the night in hysterical vigils, Tending to Annie's supreme dismay, and postponing our journey One day longer at least; for I went to bed in the morning, Firmly rejecting the pity of friends, and the pleasures of travel, Fixed in a dreadful purpose never to get any better. Later, however, I rallied, when Fred, with a maddening prologue Touching the cause of my sickness, including his fever at Jaffa, Told me that some one was waiting; and could he see me a moment? See me? Certainly not. Or,--yes. But why did he want to? So, in the dishabille of a morning-gown and an arm-chair, Languid, with eloquent wanness of eye and of cheek, I received him-- Willing to touch and reproach, and half-melted myself by my pathos, Which, with a reprobate joy, I wholly forgot the next instant, When, with electric words, few, swift, and vivid, he brought me, Through a brief tempest of tears, to this heaven of sunshine and sweetness.