PHILIP — To Bertha.

I am not sure, I own, that if first I had seen my delusion

When I saw you, last night, I should be so ready to give you

Now your promises back, and hold myself nothing above you,

That it is mine to offer a freedom you never could ask for.

Yet, believe me, indeed, from no bitter heart I release you:

You are as free of me now as though I had died in the battle,

Or as I never had lived. Nay, if it is mine to forgive you,

Go without share of the blame that could hardly be all upon your side.

Ghosts are not sensitive things; yet, after my death in the papers,

Sometimes a harrowing doubt assailed this impalpable essence:

Had I done so well to plead my cause at that moment,

When your consent must be yielded less to the lover than soldier?

“Not so well,” I was answered by that ethereal conscience

Ghosts have about them, “and not so nobly or wisely as might be.”

— Truly, I loved you, then, as now I love you no longer.

I was a prisoner then, and this doubt in the languor of sickness

Came; and it clung to my convalescence, and grew to the purpose,

After my days of captivity ended, to seek you and solve it,

And, if I haply had erred, to undo the wrong, and release you.

Well, you have solved me the doubt. I dare to trust that you wept me,

Just a little, at first, when you heard of me dead in the battle?

For we were plighted, you know, and even in this saintly humor,

I would scarce like to believe that my loss had merely relieved you.

Yet, I say, it was prudent and well not to wait for my coming

Back from the dead. If it may be I sometimes had cherished a fancy

That I had won some right to the palm with the pang of the martyr,—

Fondly intended, perhaps, some splendor of self-abnegation,—

Doubtless all that was a folly which merciful chances have spared me.

No, I am far from complaining that Circumstance coolly has ordered

Matters of tragic fate in such a commonplace fashion.

How do I know, indeed, that the easiest is n't the best way?

Friendly adieux end this note, and our little comedy with it.