It wasn't only she was clear in his mind's eye, but she was inside of him, closer than his heart.

She was there when the sun rose, so he would be saying, "It's a grand day is in it surely, Golden Bells." She was there in the dim counting house and he going over in the great intricate ledgers the clerks do be posting carefully with quills of the gray goose, so that he would be saying: "I wonder where this is and that is.

Sure I had my finger on it only a moment ago, Golden Bells." And when the dusk was falling, and the bats came out, and the quiet of Christ was over everything, and the swallows flew low on the great canals, she would be beside him, and never a word would he say to her, so near to him would she be.
And she wrought strangeness between him and the women he knew, the great grave lady with the large, pale mouth, her that was of his mind, and the little black cloak-maker with the eager, red mouth, her that was closer than mind or heart to him.

So that the first found fault with his poetry.
"I don't know what's come over you, Marco Polo,"-- and there was a touch of temper in her voice,--"but these poems of yours show me you haven't your mind on your subject.

Would you mind telling me when I had bound black hair ?" she says.