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CONFESSIONS OF A WIFE

cess hid from him. And she believed him to have passed by unwitting, so she stirred in her shallop to find her oars, but lo! she had lost them. And she was adrift upon the river, and it was dark. Now, while she sat there in perplexity, but mute, for she was royal, she heard the motion of oars, as they had been muffled, and it was not easy to follow the sound thereof, for it was a subtle stroke, although a mighty. And she recognized the stroke, and she remembered that she had lost her oars.

So the prince lifted her into his own shallop, and she, for she was royal, gainsaid him not.

I have translated as I copied, and the mistakes will speak for themselves, as mistakes always do. Of course it is a version of Atalanta,—one of those modern things that copy the antique without a blush,—yet I rather like it. I never had any patience with Atalanta.

I have been pursued all day by a fragment that I cannot mend or join, and I think it must have come from some delicate Sèvres cup or vase, of the quality that breaks because it is so beautiful:

I never know why 't is I love thee so:
I do not think 't is that thine eyes for me
Grow bright as sudden sunshine on the sea.

It is thy face I see, and it befell
Thou wert, and I was, and I love thee well.