is the meaning? The two poems seem to me supplementary of each
other. First, the sense of her elusiveness; then the dim resentment and
fear which this knowledge of mystery awakes in her. She does not (as I
have seemed to make her) _speak_ in either of these poems; but the
thoughts are those which she must have, and so far, surely, her lover
can divine her? The explanation given both by Mrs. Orr and Berdoe of
_Love in a Life_ (the first lyric), that the lover is "inhabiting the
same house with his love," seems to me simply inept. Is it not clear
that no material house[308:1] is meant? They are both inhabiting the
_body_; and she, passing through this sphere, touching it at various
points, leaves the spell of her mere being everywhere--on the curtain,
the couch, the cornice-wreath, the mirror. But through _her_ house he
cannot range, as she through actualities. And though ever she eludes
him, this is not what she sets out to do; she needs his comprehension;
she does not desire to "escape" him.

The old enigma that is no enigma--the sphinx with the answer to the
riddle ever trembling on her lips! But if she were understood, she might
be taken for granted. . . . So the lips may tremble, but the answer is
kept back:

"While the one eludes must the other pursue."

"The desire of the man is for the woman; the desire of the woman is for
the desire of the man."

In those two poems the lovers are almost gay; they can turn and smile at
one another 'mid the perplexity. The man is eager, resolute, humorous;
the woman, if not acquiescent, is at least apprehending. The heart
shall find her some day: "next time herself, not the trouble behind
her!" She feels that she can aid him to that finding; it depends, in the
last resort, on _her_.

But in _Two in the Campagna_ a different lover is to deal with. What he
wants is more than this. He wants to pass the limits of personality, to
forget the search in the oneness. There is more than "finding" to be
done: finding is not the secret. He tries to tell her--and he cannot
tell her, for he does not himself fully know.

"I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?"

His thought escapes him ever. Like a spider's silvery thread it mocks
and eludes; he seeks to catch it, to hang his rhymes upon it. . . . No;
it escapes, escapes.

"He