Page:The story of Saville - told in numbers.djvu/22

 Straight on unseeing across the stretch of wide snow-sprinkled lawn,— But she was perforce constrained to pause; he wist not that he held up A visage stamped with an awful need, like a beggar’s holding a cup— He never knew that he reached his hand, while slowly advanced the maid And into his fingers eager and worn a bunch of violets laid— And he tried to mutter a word of thanks, and he heard a quick low sob, And he sank half stunned to his seat again, afraid of his heart’s wild throb, And it was over, all over and past! and now for twenty-four hours He must live like a starving sailor, on a breath and a knot of flowers, And ever there rang in his weary brain, the roar of the city above, These words of a laurelled master, till he sickened with terror thereof, “Hath man not evil enough, O Earth, that thou must lay on him love?”

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