III
27 lines✦
Go home, now, Peter. To-night is full moon. I must be alone." "How soon the moon is full again! Annette, let me stay. Indeed, Dear Love,I shall not go away. My God, but you keep me starved! You write`No Entrance Here', over all the doors. Is it not strange, my Dear,that loving, yet you deny me entrance everywhere. Would marriagestrike you blind, or, hating bonds as you do, why should I be deniedthe rights of loving if I leave you free? You want the whole of me,you pick my brains to rest you, but you give me not one heart-beat.Oh, forgive me, Sweet! I suffer in my loving, and you know it. I cannotfeed my life on being a poet. Let me stay." "As you please, poor Peter, but it will hurt me if you do. It willcrush your heart and squeeze the love out." He answered gruffly, "I know what I'm about." "Only remember one thing from to-night. My work is taxing and I musthave sight! I _must_!" The clear moon looks in between the geraniums. On the wall,the shadow of the man is divided from the shadow of the womanby a silver thread. They are eyes, hundreds of eyes, round like marbles! Unwinking, for thereare no lids. Blue, black, gray, and hazel, and the irises are casedin the whites, and they glitter and spark under the moon. The basketis heaped with human eyes. She cracks off the whites and throws them away.They ricochet upon the roof, and get into the gutters, and bounceover the edge and disappear. But she is here, quietly sittingon the window-sill, eating human eyes. The silver-blue moonlight makes the geraniums purple, and the roof shineslike ice.
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