SVANHILD [_smiling_]. No wonder; they took care that none was heard. They trembled at the risk “my future” ran If this were whispered to unmarried Man. FALK [_after gazing a moment at her in meditative sympathy_]. That such must be your lot I long had guessed. When first I met you, I can well recall, You seemed to me quite other than the rest, Beyond the comprehension of them all. They sat at table,—fragrant tea a-brewing, And small-talk humming with the tea in tune, The young girls blushing and the young men cooing, Like pigeons on a sultry afternoon. Old maids and matrons volubly averred Morality and faith’s supreme felicity, Young wives were loud in praise of domesticity, While you stood lonely like a mateless bird. And when at last the gabbling clamour rose To a tea-orgy, a debauch of prose, You seemed a piece of silver, newly minted, Among foul notes and coppers dulled and dinted. You were a coin imported, alien, strange, Here valued at another rate of change, Not passing current in that babel mart Of poetry and butter, cheese and art. Then—while Miss Jay in triumph took the field— SVANHILD [_gravely_]. Her knight behind her, like a champion bold, His hat upon his elbow, like a shield— FALK. Your mother nodded to your untouched cup: “Drink, Svanhild dear, before your tea grows cold.” And then you drank the vapid liquor up, The mawkish brew beloved of young and old. But that name gripped me with a sudden spell; The grim old Völsungs as they fought and fell, With all their faded æons, seemed to rise In never-ending line before my eyes. In you I saw a Svanhild, like the old, But fashioned to the modern age’s mould. Sick of its hollow warfare is the world; Its lying banner it would fain have furled; But when the world does evil, its offence Is blotted in the blood of innocence. SVANHILD [_with gentle irony_]. I think, at any rate, the fumes of tea Must answer for that direful fantasy; But ’tis your least achievement, past dispute, To hear the spirit speaking, when ’tis mute. FALK [_with emotion_].