第50章 A MAN'S REPENTANCE

(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)

To-night when I came from the club at eleven, Under the gaslight I saw a face -A woman's face! and I swear to heaven It looked like the ghastly ghost of--Grace!

And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried, And loved her a season as we men do.

And then--but pshaw! why, of course, she is married, Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.

She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;

She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.

"She wasn't the kind to be broken-hearted,"

I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.

I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance, To make good my promise there and then.

But the world would have called it a mesalliance!

I dreaded the comments and sneers of men.

So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover, And to hide her heart from the cold world's sight As women do hide them, the wide earth over;My God! WAS it Grace that I saw to-night?

I thought of her married, and often with pity, A poor man's wife in some dull place.

And now to know she is here in the city, Under the gaslight, and with THAT face!

Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing Of paint and powder, and she knew me;She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing And shrank in the shade so I should not see.

There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded Her soul is at war with the life she has led.

As I looked on that face so strangely faded I wonder God did not strike me dead.

While I have been happy and gay and jolly, Received by the very best people in town, That girl whom I led in the way to folly, Has gone on recklessly down and down.

* * *

Two o'clock, and no sleep has found me;

That face I saw in the street-lamp's light Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me -I know how a murderer feels to-night.