_ Why, of course, it was Keats. It was the first line of
the _Ode to Melancholy_. Esther was still kneeling out there in the
sunlight. And how did the poem continue? _Make not your rosary of yew
berries._ What was the second line? It was ridiculous to sit astride a
bough and say _Paternosters_ and _Aves_. He could not sit there much
longer. And then just as he was on the point of letting go he saw that
Esther had risen from her knees and that Will Starling was standing in
the doorway of the chapel looking at her, not speaking but waiting for
her to speak, while he wound a strand of ivy round his fingers and
unwound it again, and wound it round again until it broke and he was
saying:
"I thought we agreed after your last display here that you'd give this
cursed chapel the go by?"
"I can't escape from it," Esther cried. "You don't understand, Will,
what it means. You never have understood."
"Dearest Essie, I understand only too well. I've paid pretty handsomely
in having to listen to reproaches, in having to dry your tears and stop
your sighs with kisses. Your damned religion is a joke. Can't you grasp
that? It's not my fault we can't get married. If I were really the
scoundrel you torment yourself into thinking I am, I would have married
and taken the risk of my strumpet of a wife turning up.
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