The form it has no power to warm again,
So I, beside the sea of memory,
Lay feebly moaning, yearning for a clew
By which to reach my own extinguished life.
It came. A burning pain shot through my palm,
And thorns awoke what thorns had put to sleep.
It all came back to me--the roar, the rush,
The upturned faces, the insane hurrahs,
The skyward-shooting spectacle, the shame--
And then I swooned again.

_Grace_.

But was he killed?
Did his foolhardy venture end in wreck?
Or did it end in something worse than wreck?
Surely, he came again!

_Mary_.

To me, no more.
He had his reasons, and I knew them soon;
But, first, the fire enkindled in my brain
Burnt through long weeks of fever--burnt my frame
Until it lay upon the sheet as white
As the pale ashes of a wasted coal.
Then, when strength came to me, and I could sit,
Braced by the double pillows that were mine,
A kind friend took my hand, and told me all.