Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/384

Suppose a fourth!—I cannot choose but think
That, with him, I were virtuouser than you
Without him: so I hate you from this gulf
And hollow of my soul, which opens out
To what, except for you, had been my heaven,
And is instead, a place to curse by! Love.’

An active kind of curse. I stood there cursed—
Confounded. I had seized and caught the sense
Of the letter with its twenty stinging snakes,
In a moment’s sweep of eyesight, and I stood
Dazed.—‘Ah! not married.’
⁠‘You mistake,’ he said;
‘I’m married. Is not Marian Erle my wife?
As God sees things, I have a wife and child;
And I, as I’m a man who honours God,
Am here to claim my child and wife.’

I felt it hard to breathe, much less to speak.
Nor word of mine was needed. Some one else
Was there for answering. ‘Romney,’ she began,
‘My great good angel, Romney.’
⁠Then at first,
I knew that Marian Erle was beautiful.
She stood there, still and pallid as a saint,
Dilated, like a saint in ecstasy,
As if the floating moonshine interposed
Betwixt her foot and the earth, and raised her up
To float upon it. ‘I had left my child,
Who sleeps,’ she said, ‘and, having drawn this way,