will go when he dies, Or when a physician makes bold to aver Just the length of a life here, both usually err. So it is not surprising that Roger, at dawn, Sat propped up by pillows, still haggard and wan, But seemingly stronger, and eager to tell His story to Ruth ere the death shadows fell. 

 "If I go before Mabel can reach me," he sighed, "Tell her this: that my heart was all hers when I died, Was all hers while I lived. Ah! I see how you start, But that other—God pity her—not with my heart, But my sensual senses I loved her. The fire Of her glance blinded men to all things save desire. It called to the beast chained within us. Her lips Held the nectar that makes a man mad when he sips. Her touch was delirium. In the fierce joys Of her kisses there lurked the fell curse which destroys All such rapture—satiety. When passion dies, And the mind finds no pleasure, the spirit no ties To replace it, disgust digs its grave. Ay! disgust Is ever the sexton who buries dead lust. 

 When two people wander from virtue's straight track, One always grows weary and longs to go back. Well, I wearied. God knows how I struggled to hide The truth from the poor, erring soul at my side. And God knows how I hated my life when I first Found that passion's mad potion had palled on my thirst. Once false to my virtues, now false to my sin, I seemed less to myself than I ever had been. We parted. This bullet hole here in my breast Proceeds with the story and tells you the rest. She smiled, I remember, in saying adieu: Then two swift, sharp reports—and I woke in Bellevue With one ball in my breast. 

 Ruth: 

 And the other in hers. No more with wild sorrow that sad bosom stirs. She is dead, sir, the woman you led to her ruin. 

And the other in hers.

 Roger: 

 The woman led me. Ah! not all the undoing In these matters lies at man's door. In the mind Of full many a so-called chaste woman we find Unchaste longings. The world heaps on man its abuse When he woos without wedding; yet women seduce And betray us; they lure us and lead us to shame; As they share in the sin, let them share in the blame. 

 Ruth: 

 Hush! the woman is dead. 

 Roger: 

 And I dying. But truth Is not changed by the death of two people! Oh, Ruth, Be just ere you judge me! the death of 

 Prev. P 62/69 next