Publication
Added as the opening poem to the story “The Wish House” when collected in Debits and Credits (1926).
Background
This poem is closely linked with “The Wish House”, which it precedes. In that story, Mrs Ashcroft has in her life treated badly a number of men who were more in love with her than she was with them. Later, however, she falls so deeply in love with Harry Mockler that, after he has left her, she takes upon herself his ill-health and physical suffering “for love’s sake”.
[G. E.]