Note now in contrast the impassioned words in which he pictures his divinity: Hers is the Beauty that hath moved the world Since the first woman. Beauty cannot die. No worm may spoil it. Unto earth it goes, There to be cherished by the cautious spring, Close folded in a rose, until the time Some new imperial spirit comes to earth Demanding a fair raiment; and the earth Yields up her robes of vermeil and of snow, Violet-veinéd—beautiful as wings, And so the Woman comes! And this beautiful passage addressed to her after the triumph of “Faustus”: Drink my song. Grow fair, you sovran flower, with earth and air; Sip from the last year’s leaves their memories Of April, May, and June, their summer joy, Their lure for every nightingale, their longing. And finally these words spoken to her in splendid scorn, after his downfall and her rejection: I took you for a Woman, thing of dust,— I—I who showed you first what you might be! But see now, you were hollow all the time, A piece of magic. Now the air blows in, And you are gone in ashes. At once the most beautiful and artistically drawn scene is that previously referred to, in which Marlowe, his star in eclipse, visits Alison after her marriage. Here is a dramatic situation, human and vital, and Miss Peabody has developed it with rare feeling and skill. The picture of Marlowe in his disgrace and despondency, coming to the woman who had believed in him, and whose love had shone upon his unseeing eyes, is drawn with fine delicacy and pathos. In the flash of revelation that comes to him from her white spirit, he speaks these words: Thou hast heard Of Light that shined in darkness, hast thou not? And darkness comprehended not the Light? So. But I tell thee why. It was because The Dark, a sleeping brute, was blinded first, Bewildered at a thing it did not know. * * * * * Have pity on the Dark, I tell you, Bride. For after all is said, there is no thing So hails the Light as that same blackness there, O’er which it shines the whiter. Do you think It will not know at last?—it will not know? Those, too, are noble passages, though too long to quote, in which Marlowe unburdens his overcharged heart to Alison, and intrusts to her faith the keeping of that higher self she had divined in him; and when Marlowe, early in the scene, referring to his misfortunes, says: You do not know The sense of waking down among the dead, Hard by some lazar-house,— note the hidden meaning in Alison’s reply: Nay; but I know The sense of death. And then to rise again And feel thyself bewildered, like a spirit Out of the grave-clothes and the fragment strewings. Passages of subtle significance, wistful, tender, and pathetic, distinguish this scene.