Neither quite knows what has happened; they both feel changed with an undefined sorrow, with a regret that pride will not enunciate. She is now again in India with her husband. There are duties, courtesies, nay, kindnesses which both will perform, but the ghost of love and sympathy will only rise in their hearts to jibber in mockery words and phrases that have lost their meaning, that have lost their enchantment. "O love! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? "Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the raven on high; Bright reason will mock thee Like the sun from a wintry sky. "From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall and cold winds come." ALI BABA, K.C.B. No. XXI ALI BABA ALONE THE LAST DAY "Now the last of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest, and the last is dead, Rise, memory, and write its praise." [December 27, 1879.] How shall I lay this spectre of my own identity? Shall I leave it to melt away gracefully in the light of setting suns? It would never do to put it out like a farthing rushlight after it had haunted the Great Ornamental in an aurora of smiles. Is Ali Baba to cease upon the midnight without pain? or is he to lie down like a tired child and weep out the spark? or should he just flit to Elysium? There, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Dian's (no allusion to little Mrs. Lollipop) fawns, amid the noise of fountains wonderous and the parle of voices thunderous, some wag might scribble on his door, "Here lies Ali Baba"--as if glancing at his truthfulness. How is he to pass effectively into the golden silences? How is he to relapse into the still-world of observation? Would four thousand five hundred a month and Simla do it, with nothing to do and allowances, and a seat beside those littered under the swart Dog-Star of India? Or is it to be the mandragora of pension, that he may sleep out the great gap of _ennui_ between this life and something better? How lonely the Government of India would feel! How the world would forget the Government of India! Voices would ask:-- Do ye sit there still in slumber In gigantic Alpine rows? The black poppies out of number Nodding, dripping from your brows To the red lees of your wine-- And so kept alive and fine. Sometimes I think that Ali Baba should be satisfied with the oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing stars the accompanying itch for blood and fame has come:--