"'Nay, 'twas your form and vesture,
Cloak and gown,
Your hooded features--gesture
Half in frown,
That faced me, pale,' he urged, 'that night in town.
"'And when, outside, I handed
To her chair
(As courtesy demanded
Of me there)
The leading lady, you peeped from the stair.
"Straight pleaded I: 'Forsooth, Love,
Had I gone,
I must have been in truth, Love,
Mad to don
Such well-known raiment.' But he still went on
"That he was not mistaken
Nor misled. -
I felt like one forsaken,
Wished me dead,
That he could think thus of the wife he had wed!
"His going seemed to waste him
Like a curse,
To wreck what once had graced him;
And, averse
To my approach, he mused, and moped, and worse.
"Till, what no words effected
Thought achieved:
IT WAS MY WRAITH--projected,
He conceived,
Thither, by my tense brain at home aggrieved.
"Thereon his credence centred
Till he died;
And, no more tempted, entered
Sanctified,
The little vault with room for one beside."
III
Thus far the lady's story. -
Now she, too,
Reclines within that hoary
Last dark mew
In Mellstock Quire with him she loved so true.
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