Cicada crawled, and rose, from under her sweet burden. ’Wait,’ she hissed; ’the grate’s open. A strong leap, and I have him.’ An idle threat; but enough to make the whelp start, and clap to the bars, and fly screaming. The Fool returned, panting, to her charge. ’Forget him,’ she said. ’I have forgotten him, my mother. But his lie——’ ’Yes?’ ’Was it a lie?’ ’About Bona? I am a woman now. I’ll answer nothing for my sex.’ ’I’ll answer for her. About my father, I meant?’ ’As thou’lt answer for her, so will I for him.’ Bernardo sighed, and lay a long while silent. Suddenly he moaned in her arms, like a child over-tired, and spoke the words already quoted:—’My feet are weary for the turning.’ ’Death is Love’s seed—a sweet child quickened of ourselves. He comes to us, his pink hands full of flowers. "See, father, see, mother," says he, "the myrtles and the orange blooms which made fragrant your bridal bed. I am their fruit—the full maturity of Love’s promise. Will you not kiss your little son, and come with him to the wise gardens where he ripened? ’Tis cold in this dark room!"’ So, in such rhapsodies, ’in love with tuneful death,’ would he often murmur, or melt, through them, into song as strange. ’Love and Forever would wed Fearless in Heaven’s sight. Life came to them and said, "Lease ye my house of light!" He put them on earth to bed, All in the noonday bright: "Sooth," to Forever Love said, "Here may we prosper right." Sudden, day waned and fled: Truth saw Forever in night. "We are deceived," he said; "Who shall pity our plight?" Death, winging by o’erhead, Heard them moan in affright. "Hold by my hem," he said; "I go the way to light."’ All the last day Cicada held him in her arms, so quiet, so motionless, that the gradual running down of his pulses was steadily perceptible to her. She felt Death stealing in, like a ghostly dawn—watched its growing glimmer with a fierce, hard-held agony. Once, before their scrap of daylight failed them, she stole her wrist to her mouth, and bit at it secretly, savagely, drawing a sluggish trickle of red. She had thought him sunk beyond notice of her; and started, and hid away the wound, as he put up a gentle, exhausted arm, detaining hers. ’Sting’st thyself, scorpion?’