She couldn’t help remarking to herself how little of the common resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a happiness which she wondered she had not seen before.  But her anguish was too great for resentment.  She felt towards their love as she might have felt towards death,—­it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart there was already the beginning of pity for them too.  Perhaps she felt that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,—­just as a child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too young to share it.  If they had only told her, might she not have loved their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)

Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have spared Jenny one of her recitations that night.  It was a poem of Mrs. Browning’s, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand.  It was the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to understand it too.  It was called a “Denial,” and began:—­

“We have met late—­it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend! 
Death’s forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,
And if I step or stir, I touch the end.

In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee,—­I, who cannot move? 
How shall I answer thy request for love? 

        Look in my face and see.

“I might have loved thee in some former days. 
Oh, then, my spirits had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise! 
Before these faded cheeks were overwept,
Had this been asked of me,
To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,—­
I should have said still...Yes, but smiled and said,
‘Look in my face and see!’

“But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart
And drowned it in life’s surge. 
In all your wide warm earth I have no part—­
light song overcomes me like a dirge. 
Could love’s great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am I a wife to choose? 
Look in my face and see—­

“While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream’s,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth

One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet—­

        Look in my face and see!

“So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
To let thee come so near. 
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one beloved woman feels thee dear!—­
Not I!—­that cannot be,
I am lost, I am changed,—­I must go farther where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
Look in my face and see.”