"She has gone! and I stand alone in the rainy, desolate street. Is it famine or wine?--but never before did my heart so madly beat, And this pain of my whirling brain: the keen, quick sense of my _Now_! Unpitied--self-unpitying--I know my want is my guilt. I feel no remorse for the past--the cup was wantonly spilt. I do not want pity--I have _no_ contrition. Knowing all that I know, Had I aught--why, then, that--and my life--and my soul--I'd stake at a throw, On the chance of winning once more sufficient to buy her kiss, To buy the dear false smile--the sweet lies whispered low, With the poisoned wine of her lips to drug the memories of this, Till the lies seemed delicious truths.... "... I _will_ forget all that I know, Oh, my love! and only remember how wondrously sweet thou art. Ah, yes! Thou lovest me well; let me die in one long embrace. Draw thee closer, yet closer. Let me feel thy breath on my face; Let us forget all things save our love--yes, even till we die In dreams of impossible joys, of more than human delight, Each sweet, passionate secret wringing from love, you and I. Through the mystical garden of Eros, hand in hand we will go, Plucking the magical fruits that poison the human heart. And what if they do? Why we care not! While we live let us live! We have ate of the magical fruit; we are drunk, and can no more strive. So hail, mad excesses of pleasure! In spite of cold virtue; in spite Of Hell, let us know once again, _one_ hour as we used to know! "... But why art thou gone in the darkness?... A dream!... My brain swims to-night. Hunger may be, or madness.... Ah, this pain at my heart.... Let me go! It is death ... death in the streets.... Well, I care not--it is better so." "Very pretty indeed," said Susan to herself, when she had read this poem; "very pretty, though I can't help thinking some of the ideas are hardly original. I wonder if I am the heroine, if I am this lovely 'Fille de Marbre?' I'm afraid he's hit me off pretty well. Clever of him; yet, after all, he must be the greater fool to stick to me if he knows me so well. Yes, he is evidently beginning to understand me. I must look out." She took the manuscript up again and re-read some of it. "Yes, my man! you were certainly thinking of yourself when you wrote this," she reflected; "you are just the weak, passionate fool described here. You are going to the dogs pretty fast. Who knows that you too will not die like a rat in the streets?"