The Nightmare

One night of the two bad years when I thought my love
was maimed with a hurt as bad as woman has had since Eve's
generation, we were together in a dream beside the stone
wall that is between the boys' and girls' playgrounds of my
first school; she was in my arms and my mouth was going
to her lips when the loathsome head started suddenly from
behind the wall; and the long foul dim fingers seized my
throat in a sudden grip, and the words of despair followed:
Too late, you fool.