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And he continued more firmly, although with stronger emotion.
Elspie, why should I speak it? you cannot believe it, and should not:
Why should I say that I love, which I all but said to another?
Yet should I dare, should I say, O Elspie, you only I love; you,
First and sole in my life that has been and surely that shall be;
Could—O, could you believe it, O Elspie, believe it and spurn not!
Is it—possible,—possible, Elspie?
Well,—she answered,
Quietly, after her fashion, still knitting,—Well, I think of it.
Yes,—I don't know, Mr. Philip,—but only it feels to me strangely
Like to the high new bridge, they used to build at, below there,
Over the burn and glen on the road. You won't understand me.
But I keep saying in my mind—this long time slowly with trouble
I have been building myself, up, up, and toilfully raising,
Just like as if the bridge were to do it itself without masons,
Painfully getting myself upraised one stone on another,
All one side I mean; and now I see on the other
Just such another fabric uprising, better and stronger,
Close to me, coming to join me: and then I sometimes fancy,—
Sometimes I find myself dreaming at nights about arches and bridges,—
Sometimes I dream of a great invisible hand coming down, and
Dropping the great key stone in the middle: there in my dreaming,
There I feel the great key stone coming in, and through it
Feel the other part—all the other stones of the archway,
Joined into mine with a queer happy sense of completeness, tingling
All the way up from the other side's basement-stones in the water,
Through the very grains of mine:—just like, when the steel, that you showed us
Moved to the magnet, it seemed a feeling got hold of them both. But
This is confusion and nonsense. I am mixing all things I can think of.
And you wont understand me, Mr. Philip.
But while she was speaking,
So it happened, a moment she paused from her work, and pondering,
Laid her hand on her lap: Philip took it: she did not resist:
So he retained her fingers, the knitting being stopped. But emotion
Came all over her more and more, from his hand, from her heart, and
Most from the sweet idea and image her brain was renewing.
So he retained her hand, and, his tears down-dropping on it,
Trembling a long time kissed it at last. And she ended.
And as she ended, up rose he; saying, What have I heard? Oh,
What have I done, that such words should be said to me? Oh, I see it,
