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Page 29
"And then she suddenly
threw off her glib
And rioting blandness 'Girl, I hate you - hate!
I came to look at my Emilio's wife,
And hate her. Aye, I'll make him trample you
Beneath his feet. If I'm not all to him,
At least I'm more to him than you could be,
And you shall feel it, you who cheated him
With silly simpers, innocent fond dove,
Who cannot coo so sweetly but he knows
There's better music and goes after it.
Do you hear? I hate you, girl. Do you hear it well?'
"At this I gathered all my pride, and looked
Full in her face, and coldly. 'Madam, yes;
I heard. It was a matter scarcely worth
Your trouble in the telling. Will you sit
And rest before you go? I say farewell,
Since you have done your errand to me here.'
And so I left her.
"You might think I sat
Brooding upon her wicked news, and wrung
With a wife's agony of doubt and hope,
With a wife's desperate disbelief. But no -
Perhaps it means that I did never love
This husband whom yet other women loved
With the whole heart in them good or bad - I felt
Only an anger hot and cold by turns,
But always anger, never simple grief,
And never, not one moment, with. a touch
Of sad forgiveness. She had said of me,
That woman, that I could not hate; and that
Was true perhaps, for I scarce hated him:
But it was truer that I could not, nay
I cannot, smile away a wrong; it burns
New in my heart for always. I might give,
If it seemed due, my life to save or serve
A traitor to me, but I could not play
At meek forgetting. Gervase, it is strange
You can forgive me, me who cheated you."
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