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Page 19
But Gervase looked at her
unthankfully,
"Am I so welcome? Yet you left me Lota."
Then her face changed, as, in clear sunset eves,
The snowy hill-tops change when the last flush
Wanes silently into a mournful grey:
She said "I had forgotten," and her voice
Was weary and asleep: she said but that,
"I had forgotten," and she turned from him
And threw herself into a listless ease,
Sitting apart.
"Forgotten what" he said
"That should have been remembered? Lota, speak;
What is your secret? Why do you hide here?
Or tell me first but this, are you alone?"
"Hide, do I? Nay it was before I hid,"
She answered with an angry carelessness,
"And, for my secret, I have none left now:
And, for alone, I have my little rooms,
And pay my little rent, and earn it first -
And so far am alone. But I have friends -
If that's your question - two kind honest friends
Who helped me to my independence here,
Good friends who never taunt me."
Then she broke
Into her passion: "Gervase, do you think
I should have tamely waited - what! with her?
If she had been a stranger, yes, perhaps.....
Till the morrow. But my father's sister! she
To preach of dangers, shame, I know not what;
To warn me, set me up a bugaboo
Of what the world would say, to sob and rave
And taunt and sneer and rate me for light ways
As if - as if I were not who I am.
See, I am not patient yet: I do not care
To be patient at some wrongs."
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