Her head, and, following, reached the room where lay One that had wronged her so; and shrank to see That beauteous pallid face, so pined away, And the starved lips that murmured painfully, “I have a secret none but she may hear.” At the Queen’s sign, they two were left anear. With that the dying rushed upon her speech, As one condemned, who gulps the poisoned wine Nor pauses, lest to see it stand at reach Were crueller still. “Madam, I sought a sign,” She cried, “to know if God would have me make Confession, and to you! now let me take “This meeting as the sign, and speak, and die!” “Child,” said the Queen, “your years are yet too few. See how I live,—and yet what sorrows lie About my heart.”—“I know,—the world spake true! You too have loved him; ay, he seems to stand Between us! Queen, you had the Prince’s hand, “But not his love!” Across the good Queen’s brow A flame of anger reddened, as when one Meets unprepared a swift and ruthless blow, But instant paled to pity, as she thought, “She wanders: ’tis the fever at her brain!” And looked her thought. The other cried again: “Yes! I am ill of body and soul indeed, Yet this was as I say. O, not for me Pity, from you who wear the widow’s weed, Unknowing!”—“Woman, whose could that love be, If not all mine?” The other, with a moan, Rose in her bed; the pillow, backward thrown, Was darkened with the torrent of her hair. “’Twas hers,” she wailed,—“’twas hers who loved him best.” Then tore apart her night-robe, and laid bare Her flesh, and lo! against her poor white breast Close round her gloomed a shift of blackest serge, Fearful, concealed!—“I might not sing his dirge,” She said, “nor moan aloud and bring him shame, Nor haunt his tomb and cling about the grate, But this I fashioned when the tidings came That he was dead and I must expiate, Being left, our double sin!”—In the Queen’s heart, The tiger—that is prisoned at life’s start In mortals, though perchance it never wakes From its mute sleep—began to rouse and crawl. Her lips grew white, and on her nostrils flakes Of wrath and loathing stood. “What, now, is all This wicked drivel?” she cried; “how dare they bring The Queen to listen to so foul a thing?” “Queen! I speak truth,—the truth, I say! He fed Upon these lips,—this hair he loved to praise! I held within these arms his bright fair head Pressed close, ah, close!—Our lifetimes were the days We met,—the rest a void!”—“Thou spectral Sin, Be silent! or, if such a thing hath been,— “If this be not thy frenzy,—quick, the proof, Before I score the lie thy lips amid!” She spoke so dread the other crouched aloof, Panting, but with gaunt hands somewhere undid A knot within her hair, and thence she took The signet-ring and passed it. The Queen’s look