The Story
of Saville
And a pain rapacious surged over his soul like a flood or a pestilent wind,
Or octopus-like sucked into his heart, shark-toothed and poisonous-finned,
And he summoned the strength of his nature in its outraged trust to arise
And help him to hate himself and this woman, to utterly loathe and despise
Her who had made him a pastime, bridging the winter across
With a masque, a foolery petty and vain, amusing herself with his loss,—
God! it had been but an insult throughout, her ’havior so sisterly free,—
She scarce had esteemed him a man at all,—why, then, forsooth! should she be
Distantly coy with a clod, reserved as a maid is alway
With a man? She had seen at a glance that no least possibility lay
Of love ’twixt herself and a creature ignoble, all of whose manlihood
The chief enchanter had Merlin-wise sunk in a pathless wood,
And so she had pitied him for a season, but now she had wearied and sped
To a southern clime where the grapes were gold and the pomegranates lusciously red.
