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Page 34
"'She is,' he cried,
'A fiend, a beautiful fierce deadly fiend.'
I said 'She is your love.' And then he bowed
His head into his hands, and presently
He almost sobbed and when he looked at me
I saw he had been weeping ... like a child
Whose cunning has been just enough to find
The way to some pet mischief, not enough
To gloze it at the need. And yet I felt
A sadness for him when I saw him thus.
"'Lota,' he gasped 'what shall I say to you?
That woman is my demon: day by day
I grow to hate her, as the drunkard hates
The draught he cannot part from; day by day
She drugs me with the passion of her love,
And makes me weak before her. I had thought
Our parting was for ever, when I learned
My one true lesson of full perfect love -
When I loved you and knew I never loved
Another woman. But I have not known
How to make your heart beat with mine, not found
The way to make you rich with happiness
So that some drops might overbrim and feed
My thirsty love. I have but wearied you
With my poor feverish cravings after love;
Some fine grave instinct in you doubtless spoke
To make you shut me out into the cold,
Because I had sat down by other fires
Seeking for warmth and being charred and scorched
And was not worthy to sit in your sun -
You could not love me. And, when once we met
By chance, she guessed it in my silent face,
Which looked, she said, as if it were a frost
For want of smiles to thaw it: and she made
The old spell of her fervour strong again,
And drew me to her. And at first it was
Like the door thrown open of a pleasant hut,
Where light and food and a blaze upon the hearth
Make comfort to a worn out shipwrecked man,
Who looked to be, if gales had not sprung up,
Welcomed that night in his luxurious home.
But afterwards it was the cabin grown
A stifling prison while the outside snows
Bank round and keep the door. Lota, my love,
I do not love her, I would fly from her,
I would be out of reach of her wild will,
Her ecstasies and anguish. I am weak,
I cannot spurn a woman at my feet,
But you might make me stronger if you would:
Help me, my own one.'
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