Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/287

Rh My scanty bundle up, and went my way, Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth Beyond those doors, ’Twas natural, of course, She should not ask me where I meant to sleep; I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine, Like others of my sort; the bed was laid For us. By any woman, womanly, Had thought of him who should be in a month, The sinless babe that should be in a month, And if by chance he might be warmer housed Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’

I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself, A wife, I think, had scandals of her own, A lover, not her husband.’ ‘Ay,’ she said ‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise; I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.

‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculous If not so lamentable! It’s the way With these light women of a thrifty vice, My Marian,—always hard upon the rent In any sister’s virtue! while they keep Their chastity so darned with perfidy, That, though a rag itself, it looks as well Across a street, in balcony or coach, As any stronger stuff might. For my part, I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews