"When I came into this room, It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; And I told myself before I came to find you, `I shall tell him, If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.' And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before I finish, That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, Don't think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge Of how little you found that's in me and was in me all along. I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, I'd be half as much as horses, -- and it seems that I was wrong; I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it -- Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories With a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sure That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?" "Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall? Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ." "If I don't?" "There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman, But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung." "He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing young; I wonder if he makes believe that women who are giving All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible. . . ." "Stop -- you devil!"