HaeMON: This is a gin, a net, and I am fast!
CHARLES: A net to snare what never has been free?
HaeMON: Still must it be this tenderness lives false Upon your lips.
CHARLES: "Must," say you, "must," yet stand----
HaeMON: Then shall he rest--lie easy down and rest In treachery?
CHARLES: He----?
HaeMON: Yes.
CHARLES: You mean----?
HaeMON: Yes!--yes!
CHARLES: Antonio?
HaeMON: Is it not open?
CHARLES (_confusedly_): No: Glooms start around me, glooms that seethe and cling.
HaeMON: This maid who called, did she come idly here?
You stir? you rouse?
CHARLES: A coldness runs in me.
HaeMON: And have not I come strangely on the hour!
CHARLES: It "gins to burn!
HaeMON: Not entered a strange way?
CHARLES: You pause and ever pause upon my patience.
"Twill heave unbearably!
HaeMON: Then hear me, hear!-- Senseless against a bank I found a boy, Hurled by some ruthless hoof. Near him this key And writing----
CHARLES: Tell it!
HaeMON: That avows, mid lines Clandestine of purport, Antonio And Helena, under these shades at twelve----
CHARLES: You bring on me a furious desolation.
But Fulvia, ah, she----
HaeMON: Not there is trust!
She is aware and aids in his deceit.
This writing says it of her.
CHARLES: Fulvia? No!
No, no!--Though she had sudden whispers for him!
A lie--Yet fast belief fixes its fangs On me and will not loose me--for against My hope she set a coldness and a doubt!
O woman woven through all fibres of me!
(_Starting up._) But he----!
HaeMON: Ah then, it runs in you, the rush And pang that answer mine?
CHARLES (_quietly_): If they are still----
HaeMON: Under these shades?
CHARLES: And--lips to lips----
HaeMON: Ah, G.o.d!
You will?--you will?
CHARLES: Hush! something--No, it was But fate cried out in me, not any voice.
HaeMON: We must be swift.
CHARLES: It cries again. I will Not listen! He"s not flesh of me--not flesh!
A traitor is no son, nor was nor shall be!
Though it shriek desolation utterly I will not listen!
HaeMON: Do not!
CHARLES: And to-day He shook, ashen and clenched, remembering The guilty secret in him!
HaeMON: Still he"s free.
CHARLES: My words fell warm as tears--"A rift has come, A rift, a smile, a breath"--men speak so when They creep from madness up into some s.p.a.ce Whose element is love.
HaeMON: And will you sink To a weak palsy--who should o"erwhelm With penalty!
CHARLES (_rousing_): No! all and ever false Was he who"s so when most he should be true!
I will make treachery bitter to all time.
Bring dread on all to whom are given sons!
Down generations shall they peer and tremble, Look on me as on majesties accursed!-- Search every shade--search, search! You stand as death.
I am in famine till he gives me groan!
(_They go in opposite directions._
_Enter FULVIA, distressed, and GIULIA._
FULVIA: He was with Haemon?
GIULIA: On that seat.
FULVIA: Convulsed, Yet pa.s.sionless?