. She begins her "reasoning."

"You wanted my love--is that much true?
And so I did love, so I do:
What has come of it all along?

I took you--how could I otherwise?
For a world to me, and more;
For all, love greatens and glorifies
Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes,
In what was mere earth before.

Yes, earth--yes, mere ignoble earth!
Now do I mis-state, mistake?
Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?
Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,
Seal my sense up for your sake?

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed!
You were just weak earth, I knew":

--and then, pursuing, she sums him up as we saw at the beginning of our
study.

Well for her, I say again, that this is but a fancied talk! And since it
is, we can accord her a measure of wisdom. For she _has_ been wise in
one thing: she has not "wronged his weakness and called it worth"--that
memorable phrase, so Browningesque!

She has "seen through" him, yet she loves him. Thus far, then, kind and
wise in her great passion. . . . But she should _forget_ that she has
seen through him--she should keep that vision in the background, not
hold it ever in her sight. And now herself begins to see that this is
where she has not been wise. She took him for hers, just as he was--and
did not he, thus accepted, find her his? Has she not watched all that
was as yet developed in him, and waited patiently, wonderingly, for the
more to come?

"Well, and if none of these good things came,
What did the failure prove?
The man was my whole world, all the same."

_That_ is the fault in her:

"That I do love, watch too long,
And wait too well, and weary and wear;
And 'tis all an old story, and my despair
Fit subject for some new song."

She has shown him too much love and indulgence and hope implied in the
indulgence: this was the wrong way. The "bond" has been felt--and such
"light, light love" as his has wings to fly at the mere suspicion of a
bond. He has grown weary of her "wisdom"; pleasure is his aim in life,
and _that_ is always ready to "turn up next in a laughing eye." . . . So
the songs have said and will say for all time--the new songs for the old
despair.

But though she knows all this (we seem to see), she will not be able to
act upon it. Always she will watch too long, and wait too well. Hers is
a nature as simple as it is inten