The Day of His Youth

								

could never be the same; but I did not translate the knowledge. All the
poets had not told me enough; Shakespeare had not prepared me. But last
night--do I ever sleep now?--when I lay thinking, thinking, and always
of you, my soul spoke and said to me, "So great a thing must be
eternal. This longing is like a Beethoven Sonata; it will live and
live, growing in glory and color, through the ages, even if it live in
your soul alone." And I woke to the sense of it all, and spoke aloud:
"It is love!" It is like having a treasure given me to be all my own;
for now I have a word for happy use, and I can say over and over, "I
love you," and so tell you all. I can whisper "Beloved" in the brief
pauses when the others are with us and I have only the chance of a word
in your ear. But let me see you next alone. Let me look into your eyes,
and demand whether your soul also has had revelation of the truth.
[Sidenote: Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume]
I ask myself whether this had to come to you so soon, and whether I
could have prevented it. I am afraid not. You were bound to fancy the
first woman you met, and that woman chanced to be Zoe Montrose. I know
exactly how it was. I have yellow hair, and the sun shone on it. There
is always a reason, if one could follow it far enough. It might have
been Clara. She was with me in the boat, if you remember; only the sun
struck her hair at a different angle, and you never discovered how red
it is in the hollows, how like leaf mould without. Bismillah! the
gods have selected me for your enlightenment, and their will be done. I
am glad for you in one particular only. I am a worldly woman, filled
from the crown to the toe topful of earthly wisdom; but I am not of
those sentimental sirens who, in the strictest good-breeding, turn men
into beasts by dallying with their worship, and then leaving them high
and dry on the rock of disillusionment. I am honest, and I will sweep
away your cobwebs in the beginning. My dear, there is no such thing as
love as you conceive it. What you and the other poets have seen is a
will-o'-the-wisp, created, heaven knows why, save that we may learn
hard lessons and that the world may be peopled. You feel for me an
ecstasy of devotion. You think it will be eternal; that you were made
for me and I for you, and that our two souls will sail forever on in
each other's company, chanting pretty trifles by the way. God bless and
save you! this is the very hyperbole of the poets, and of poets under
forty at that. What dominates you is a fever of the blood, an attendant
delirium or the mind solely depending on your youth and my passable
prettiness. I wish you might have been saved; but it had to happen. I
wish, too, that the attack might leave you lightly; but that, also,
owing to your unfortunate temperament, is impossible. I can only show
my real liking for you by acting sedately, and sitting by your bedside
until you rise up sane again and put your hand to the world's work. Do