Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/58

 measured the cruelty they will give you; but you do not know. You know but half—you weep for the other half, though it be horror.

"Still, though you are but half-conscious, though you weep for the other half, when you sit listening with your head bent and your hands dead cold, where the gray waves wash the sea-wall at high-tide—yet you know some of each one of the things that are around you.

"Wonderful in conception is the half-conscious soul," said Annabel Lee.

I looked hard at my friend Annabel Lee. Was she teasing me? Was she laughing at me? For she does tease me and she does laugh at me. And was she at either of these pastimes, with all this about a half-conscious soul?

But here again she left me ignorant of her thought, and there is no way of knowing.