Page:Barham Beach - a poem of regeneration.djvu/48

She could remember how her life, smooth, soft, had come to be
Still smoother, softer, from the faintest smirch or shadow free-
She could remember wondering how Lance had dared to buy
Such diamonds to gem her hands as stars the wintry sky,
Then had come rumors how she fought those dragon rumors down!
That toadlike swelled and winked and leered, and leaped across the town,
Eumors of other diamonds starring false white alien hands,
And of a merry game that s played with loose-leaved rosy bands,
Not with strict Hymen s narrow cirque of virgin gold, a game
Of mad extravagance that ends in black cyclonic shame,
Then like a thunderclap the journals launched their javelins
On Lance s life and dragged to light a hundred hiding sins,
And he was hated! hated so that even in the street
Upon herself and little child deep imprecations beat
From men that he had beggared, and she heard them sneering say
"Look at the seal and velvet garb for which our earnings pay!"-
Then the slow process of the law, the feints, evasions, fears,
The verdict, "Guilty!" the sharp stroke of doom, "For twenty years!"
Then the crowd s jubilance quick-stilled, the low approving note,
Then a gray fog that chilled her heart, a climbing in her throat,
Her husband s bending, anguished face, wild-eyed, with ashen cheeks,
Then, merciful oblivion for long, long lotosed weeks.