And so shall we be ruined, both of us.
Norbert, I know her to the skin and bone
You do not know her, were not born to it,
To feel what she can see or cannot see.
Love, she is generous, ay, despite your smile,
Generous as you are. For, in that thin frame
Pain-twisted, punctured through and through with cares,
There lived a lavish soul until it starved
Debarred all healthy food.
Pity that, stoop to that, ere you begin
(The true man's way) on justice and your rights, Exactions and acquittance of the past.
see what justice she will deal!
We women hate a debt as men a gift.
Suppose her some poor keeper of a school
Whose business is to sit thro' summer-months
And dole out children's leave to go and play,
Herself superior to such lightness-she
In the arm-chair's state and pædagogic pomp,
To the life, the laughter, sun and youth outside
We wonder such an one looks black on us?
I do not bid you wake her tenderness,
That were vain truly none is left to wake
But, let her think her justice is engaged
To take the shape of tenderness, and mark
If she 'll not coldly do its warmest deed!
Does she love me, I ask you? not a whit.
Yet, thinking that her justice was engaged
To help a kinswoman, she took me up -
Did more on that bare ground than other loves
Would do on greater argument. For me,
I have no equivalent of that cold kind
To pay her with; my love alone to give
If I give any thing. I give her love.
I feel I ought to help her, and I will.
So for her sake, as yours, I tell you twice
That women hate a debt as men a gift.
If I were you, I could obtain this grace
Would lay the whole I did to love's account,
Nor yet be very false as courtiers go
Declare that my success was recompense;
It would be so, in fact: what were it else?
And then, once loosed her generosity
were I but you To turn it, let it seem to move itself,
And make it give the thing I really take,
Accepting so, in the poor cousin's hand,
All value as the next thing to the queen
Since none loves her directly, none dares that!
A shadow of a thing, a name's mere echo
Suffices those who miss the name and thing;
You pick up just a ribbon she has worn
To keep in proof how near her breath you came.
Say I'm so near I seem a piece of her —
Ask for me that way— (oh, you understand)
And find the same gift yielded with a grace,
Which if you make the least show to extort
You'll see! and when you have ruined both of us, Disertate on the Queen's ingratitude!
Then, if I turn it that way, you consent?
'Tis not my way; I have more hope in truth.
Still, if you won't have truth — why, this indeed,
Is scarcely false, I'll so express the sense.
How I have loved you! then, you take my way
Are mine as you have been her minister,
Work out my thought, give it effect for me,
Paint plain my poor conceit and make it serve?
I owe that withered woman every thing –
Life, fortune, you, remember! Take my part-
Help me to pay her! Stand upon your rights?
You, with my rose, my hands, my heart on you?
Your rights are mine you have no rights but mine.
[He breaks from her she remains. Dance-music
She is here as he said. Speak! quick!
Is it so? is it true- or false? One word!
I love you, Constance, from my soul.
Now say once more, with any words you will,
It is because the Mother has such grace
That if we had but faith - wherein we fail
Whate'er we yearn for would be granted us;
Howbeit we let our whims prescribe despair,
Our fancies thwart and cramp our will,
And so accepting life, abjure ourselves!
Constance, I had abjured the hope of love
And of being loved, as truly as yon palm
The hope of seeing Egypt from that turf.
But it was so, Constance, it was so.
or do men say it? fancies say -
"Stop here, your life is set, you are grown old.
no love for you, too late for love
One takes the hint half meets it like a child,
Ashamed at any feelings that oppose.
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