Page:The story of Saville - told in numbers.djvu/73

 At the mercy of any unlooked-for pang or merest material qualm, And the astral truth that is grasped today in prayerful solitude Seems but a trifle, a thing of naught, in tomorrow’s hysterical mood! But Kyrle was a man and so heaven had blessed him with absolute masculine sense Of the right and the wrong, with a grand disdain of subterfuge and pretense,— He had harbored a foe in his household, and now he was stung with a doubt How to punish the viperish evil and cast the intruder out. Then Saville, still sobbing, writhed up to her knees, and he felt her poor heart beating wild ’Gainst his own, resentful and harsh as Lear’s, obdurate, unreconciled, And for pity she plead, and pardon, and her plea was the plea of a child, “There are many worse women than I am, dear,—truly, though you have forgot,— I must read you the terrible papers and show you if there are not!” 69