My love, do not grieve if I keep this flimsy mist of distance round me.

This frail reserve of mine is no mere woman's coyness, but a slender stem
on which the flower of my self-surrender bends towards you with reticent
grace.



15


I have donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing.

It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of
that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh
offering, dressed in a new robe?

My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and
therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young
grass and now that of the winter rice.

To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to
my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and
it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.



16