'You see,' I said,'I have mixed these colors with my life-wine.'

'Why, then,' she asked, carelessly, 'with your insufficient strength,
were you tempted to woo and follow me?'

So my life with its endeavors was a wreck. I thought of the good I had
sacrificed, of the hopes that had failed. The Past and Future alike
pierced my hands with crucificial nails, till, faint with the pain and
the scorning, I lapsed into a long prostration, from which I came at
last to the dawn-light of sad, once-forgotten eyes--to the odor of
withered rosemary.

'True heart that I spurned,' I cried, 'can you forgive? I will return
Aspiro scorn for scorn, and go humbly back, where it is perhaps not yet
too late for happiness.'

With dreary reproaches came memory, disenthralled. I dreamed of my
youth, its love, and its aim. I pictured a porch with its breeze-tossed
vines, a rocking boat on a limpid lake, a narrow path through
twilight-brooded woods, and each scene the shrine of a sweet face with
brown, banded hair, and love-lit eyes.

And these pictures were the True. My heart cleaved the eternity of
separation, beaconing my sad return to them, and I followed gladly, hope
being not yet dead.

The summer porch was shady with fragrant vines--but I missed the face. I
buoyed my heart, and said, 'Of course she would not have waited so
long.'