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142 That there was not another man on earth Whom she could ever love, or who could make So much as a love thought go through her brain; And he had smiled. And just before he died His lips had made as if to say something— Something that passed unwhispered with his breath, Out of her reach, out of all quest of it. And then, could she have known enough to know The meaning of her grief, the folly of it, The faithlessness and the proud anguish of it, There might be now no threads to punish her, No vampire thoughts to suck the coward blood, The life, the very soul of her.

Yes, Yes, They might come back. . . . But why should they come back? Why was it she had suffered? Why had she Struggled and grown these years to demonstrate That close without those hovering clouds of gloom And through them here and there forever gleamed The Light itself, the life, the love, the glory, Which was of its own radiance good proof That all the rest was darkness and blind sight? And who was she? The woman she had known—