LXII

Gazing upon him now, severe and dead, / It seemed a curious thing that she had lain / Beside him many a night in that cold bed, / And that had been which would not be again. / From his desirous body the great heat / Was gone at last, it seemed, and the taut nerves / Loosened forever. Formally the sheet / Set forth for her to-day those heavy curves / And lengths familiar as the bedroom door. / She was as one that enters, sly, and proud, / To where her husband speaks before a crowd, / And sees a man she never saw before— / The man who eats his victuals at her side, / Small, and absurd, and hers: for once, not hers, unclassified.