The conductor talked with the
driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. They stood
on the steps of the tram, he on the upper, she on the lower. She came
up to his step many times between their phrases and went down again and
once or twice remained beside him forgetting to go down and then went
down. Let be! Let be!

Ten years from that wisdom of children to his folly. If he sent her the
verses? They would be read out at breakfast amid the tapping of
egg-shells. Folly indeed! Her brothers would laugh and try to wrest the
page from each other with their strong hard fingers. The suave priest,
her uncle, seated in his arm-chair, would hold the page at arm's
length, read it smiling and approve of the literary form.

No, no; that was folly. Even if he sent her the verses she would not
show them to others. No, no; she could not.

He began to feel that he had wronged her. A sense of her innocence
moved him almost to pity her, an innocence he had never understood till
he had come to the knowledge of it through sin, an innocence which she
too had not understood while she was innocent or before the strange
humiliation of her nature had first come upon her. Then first her soul
had begun to live as his soul had when he had first sinned, and a
tender compassion filled his heart as he remembered her frail pallor
and her eyes, humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood.

While his soul had passed from ecstasy to languor where had she been?
Might it be, in the mysterious ways of spiritual life, that her soul at
those same moments had been conscious of his homage? It might be.

A glow of desire kindled again his soul and fired and fulfilled all his
body. Conscious of his desire she was waking from odorous sleep, the
temptress of his villanelle. Her eyes, dark and with a look of languor,
were opening to his eyes. Her nakedness yielded to him, radiant, warm,
odorous and lavish-limbed, enfolded him like a shining cloud, enfolded
him like water with a liquid life; and like a cloud of vapour or like
waters circumfluent in space the liquid letters of speech, symbols of
the element of mystery, flowed forth over his brain.

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocea