Then in her mind was the proud woman a loathing,
Who dared to waste a marvel such as this,
The right in the world's knowledge so to love.
O pitiful evil blasting so great a flesh,
Walling a spirit so governing itself
In spite of desolation. A maid's thought thus
Knew how the frames of mastery can suffer.
.....
Sometimes at night when not even lepers walked,
Solitary in the Syrian meadows she
Would wander in the old perplexity
That the moon makes of love. Never, she knew,
Could any adoration that she brought
Touch even the Lord Naaman's banishment,
The Naaman fallen from the time when even
Great ladies dare not speak the thing they felt.
She was nothing, or the world could never know
If she was more than nothing; a maid to bind
Tresses for beauty that was not her own.
And yet she knew that she had beauty too,
A little hermit beauty that might spend
Royally if it dare and a man would speak,--
Royally, Naaman, but he could not hear.
But still for all the silence of her lips,
And heart with promise nothing known, she loved--
Loved the sad leper walking in the dusk,
Loved the great lord, loved even his leprosy,
Since by it he came a little down to her,
Loved him, and knew that her love was the sum
Of all that loving, and must be.
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