the Potter's Field thrives. But you, poor unfortunate, you shall not lie In that dust heap of death; while the summers roll by You shall sleep where green hillsides are kissed by the wave, And the soft hand of pity shall care for your grave. 

 

 XI. 

 Ruth's Letter to Maurice, Six Months Later. 

 The springtime is here in our old home again, Which again you have left. Oh, most worthy of men, Why grieve for unworthiness? Why waste your life For a woman who never was meant for a wife? Mabel Lee has no love in her nature. Your heart Would have starved in her keeping. She plays her new part, As the faithful, forgiving, sweet spouse, with content. I think she is secretly glad Roger went Astray for a season. She stands up still higher On her pedestal, now, for Bay Bend to admire. She is pleased with herself. As for Roger, he trots Like a lamb in her wake, with the blemishing spots Of his sins washed away by the Church. Oh I seem To myself, in these days, like one waked from a dream To blessed reality. Off in the Bay I saw a fair snowy sailed ship yesterday. The masts shone like gold, and the furrowed waves laughed, To be beat into foam by the beautiful craft. But close in the harbor I saw the ship lying; What seemed like the wings of a sea gull when flying, Were weather stained sheets; there were no masts of gold, And the craft was uncleanly, unseaworthy, old. Well, the man whom I loved, and loved vainly, and whom I fancied had shadowed my whole life with gloom, Has been shown to my sight like that ship in the Bay, And all my illusions have vanished away. The man is by nature weak, selfish, unstable. I think if some woman more loving than Mabel, More tender, more tactful, less painfully good, Had directed his home-life, perchance Roger would Have evolved his best self, that pure atom of God, Which lies deep in each heart like a seed in the sod. 'Tis the world's over-virtuous women, ofttimes, Who drive men of weak will into sexual crimes. I pity him.  (God knows I pity, each, all Of the poor striving souls who grope blindly and fall By the wayside of life.)  But the love which unbidden Crept into my heart, and was guarded and hidden For years, that has vanished. It passed like a breath, In the gray Autumn morning when Roger faced death, As he thought, and uncovered his heart to my sight. Like a corpse, resurrected and brought to the light, Which crumbles to ashes, the love of my youth Crumbled off into nothingness. Ah, it is truth; Love can die! You may hold it is not the true thing, Not the genuine passion, which dies or takes wing; But the soil 

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