QUEEN: It was true!
[_She s.n.a.t.c.hes her hand away._
Ah, I remember it. It was true.
ZOON: All is unreal but love, my crowned Zoomzoomarma. Where there was not love it cannot have been true.
[_He tries to take her hand again._
QUEEN: Touch not my hand. It was true.
ZOON: What was the saying heard in the dream of Earth that was true?
QUEEN: None is worthy to touch my hand; no, none.
ZOON: By Aether Mountain, I will kiss your hand again! What is this saying out of a dream that dares deny reality?
QUEEN: It is true! Oh, it is true!
ZOON: Out of that hurried, aimless dream, that knows not its own end even, you have brought me a saying and say it against love.
QUEEN: I say it is true!
ZOON: Nothing is true against love. Fate only is greater.
QUEEN: Then it is Fate.
ZOON: Against Fate I will kiss your hand again.
QUEEN: None are worthy. No, none.
[_She draws her rapier._
ZOON: I will kiss your hand again.
QUEEN: It must be this (_pointing with rapier_) for none are worthy.
ZOON: Though it be death I kiss your hand again.
QUEEN: It is certain death.
ZOON: Oh, Zoomzoomarma, forget that troubled dream, and things said by dreamers, while I kiss your hand in heaven if only once again.
QUEEN: None are worthy. It is death. None are worthy. None.
ZOON: Though it be death, yet once again upon Aether Mountain in heaven I kiss your hand.
QUEEN: Away! It is death. Upon the word of a Queen.
ZOON: I kiss your h ...
[_She standing kills him kneeling. He falls off Aether Mountain, behind it out of sight._
[_As he falls he calls her name after intervals. She kneels upon the summit and watches him falling, falling, falling._
[_Fainter and fainter as he falls from that tremendous height comes up her name as he calls it._
Zoomzoomarma! Zoomzoomarma! Zoomzoomarma!
[_Still she is watching and he is falling still._
[_At last when his cry of_ ZOOMZOOMARMA _comes almost unheard to that incredible height and then is heard no more, she turns, and with infinite neatness picking up her skirts steps down daintily over the snow._
[_She is going Earthward as the curtain falls._
CURTAIN.
CHEEZO
_DRAMATIS PERSONae_
SLADDER, _a successful man_.
SPLURGE, _his secretary and publicity agent_.
THE REV. CHARLES HIPPANTHIGH.
BUTLER.
MRS. SLADDER.
ERMYNTRUDE SLADDER.
SCENE
_The big house that_ SLADDER _has bought in the country._ SLADDER"S _study. Large French window opening on to a lawn._
_Time: Now._
SLADDER"S _daughter is seated in an armchair tapping on the arm of it a little impatiently._
_The door opens very cautiously, and the head of_ MRS. SLADDER _is put round it._
MRS. SLADDER: O, Ermyntrude. Whatever are you doing here?
ERMYNTRUDE: I wanted to speak to father, mother.