“Are you so much offended, you will not speak to me?” said she. 
  “Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading
  Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward,
  Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum? 635
  Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying
  What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it;
  For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion,
  That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
  Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, 640
  Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together. 
  Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak of Miles Standish,
  Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues,
  Praising his courage and strength, and even his fighting in Flanders,
  As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a woman, 645
  Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting your hero. 
  Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. 
  You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us,
  Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken!”
  Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the friend
      of Miles Standish:  650
  “I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was angry,
  Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in my keeping.” 
  “No!” interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt, and decisive;
  “No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely. 
  I was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman 655
  Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
  Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. 
  Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women
  Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers
  Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen,
      and unfruitful, 660
  Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs.” 
  Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: 
  “Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always
  More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden,[43]
  More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of Havilah flowing, 665
  Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet of the garden!”
  “Ah, by these words, I can see,” again interrupted the maiden,
  “How very little you prize me, or care for what I am saying. 
  When from the depths of my heart, in pain and with secret misgiving,
  Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only and kindness, 670
  Straightway you take up my words, that are plain and direct