A Man's Repentance

(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)     To-night when I came from the club at eleven,          Under the gaslight I saw a face -     A woman's face! and I swear to heaven          It looked like the ghastly ghost of - Grace!     And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried,          And loved her a season as we men do.     And then - but pshaw! why, of course, she is married,          Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.     She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;          She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.     "She wasn't the kind to be broken-hearted,"          I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.     I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance,          To make good my promise there and then.     But the world would have called it a mesalliance!          I dreaded the comments and sneers of men.     So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover,          And to hide her heart from the cold world's sight     As women do hide them, the wide earth over;          My God! was it Grace that I saw to-night?     I thought of her married, and often with pity,          A poor man's wife in some dull place.     And now to know she is here in the city,          Under the gaslight, and with that face!     Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing          Of paint and powder, and she knew me;     She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing          And shrank in the shade so I should not see.     There was hell in her eyes!    She was worn and jaded          Her soul is at war with the life she has led.     As I looked on that face so strangely faded          I wonder God did not strike me dead.     While I have been happy and gay and jolly,          Received by the very best people in town,     That girl whom I led in the way to folly,          Has gone on recklessly down and down.     * * * * *     Two o'clock, and no sleep has found me;          That face I saw in the street-lamp's light     Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me -          I know how a murderer feels to-night.