When the vision faded from me on Broadway, I turned back to my home, and there, before the dawn came, tried to write out in words one thought of the many that thronged upon me. I have almost forgotten the art of making rhymes if ever I knew it.
All beauteous things the world's allurement knows: Starred Venus, when she droops on Tyrian couch While Evening draws her dusky curtains close, Or pearled from morning bath she seems to crouch;
In bleak November one strayed violet; The rathe spring-beauty scattered wide like snow; The opal in a cirque of diamonds set; Rare silken gowns that rustle as they flow;
The dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge; The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight; A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge; The sunrise flaming on an Alpine height;--
All these I've seen, yet never learned, till now In thy sweet smiling, to accord my vow Austere of truth with beauty's charmed delight.
You are a magician rather than a lover. And no lover, I think, was ever so subtle at reasoning. At least you do not act the part as I supposed it was played. A lover, I thought, was one who stood at the door of a woman's heart and serenaded till she crept out upon her little balcony of sighs and kissed her hand to him, or shed a tokening bloom upon his upturned countenance. So far as I could imagine, he was prehistoric in the simplicity of his methods. Two things I never suspected: that love is the kind of romantic exegesis you represent it to be, or that every lover, psychically, is a sort of twin phenomenon--that he is _two_ men instead of one! And after he is married, I suppose he will be a domestic _trinity_, but with his godhead concerned with the affairs of the world at large. I am awed by the revelation; still, it excuses much in my conduct that I had before felt was reprehensible; for I have scarcely faced my own reflection in the glass since my ignominious capitulation. Something within charged treachery against poor Jessica. But if there are _two_ of you, and only _one_ of me, that fact gives a new and honourable complexion to my part in the transaction.
However, the way you have multiplied yourself and doubled forces upon me may be good masculine tactics, but I am sure it is an unparliamentary advantage you have taken. For you have not only posed as a lover, but with the cunning words of a logician you prove what seemed wrong to be really a sublime right; and what _I_ charged as selfishness, _you_ call "a prayer." I am confused by your argument; it seems incontestable. But do you know, my Philip, that a woman's convictions are never reached by a mere argument? For they are hidden in her heart, not in her little bias-fold mind. And so, in spite of your sweet reasoning with me, and the assumption you make of omniscience concerning me, my convictions remain. Only, now, I do not know whether I cherish them against you or against the God who made me simple and you double.