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(SMOKER'S CLUB-STORY)
I WAITED at home all the while they were boating together- / My wife and my near neighbour's wife: / Till there entered a woman I loved more than life, / And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather, / With a sense that some mischief was rife.
Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies / Was drowned-which of them was unknown: / And I marvelled-my friend's wife? -or was it my own / Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is? / -We learnt it was _his_ had so gone.
Then I cried in unrest: "He is free! But no good is releasing / To him as it would be to me! " / "-But it is," said the woman I loved, quietly. / "How? " I asked her. "-Because he has long loved me too without / ceasing, / And it's just the same thing, don't you see. "