ANGHARAT. Love is an error that may blind the best. GUENEVERA. A mighty error oft hath seem’d a sin. My death is vowed, and death must needs take place. But such a death as stands with just remorse: Death to the world and to her slippery joys: A full divorce from all this courtly pomp, Where daily penance, done for each offence, May render due revenge for every wrong. Which to accomplish, pray my dearest friends, That they forthwith, attir’d in saddest guise, Conduct me to the cloister next hereby, There to profess, and to renounce the world. ANGHARAT. Alas! what change were that! from kingly roofs To cloistered cells--to live and die at once! To want your stately troops, your friends and kin, To shun the shows and sights of stately court; To see in sort alive your country’s death. Yea, whatsoe’er even death itself withdraws From any else, that life withdraws from you. Yet since your highness is so fully bent, I will obey: the whiles assuage your grief. [_Exit_. THE FOURTH SCENE MORDRED, GUENEVERA, CONAN. MORDRED. The hour, which erst I always feared most The certain ruin of my desperate state, Is happened now! why turn’st thou (mind) thy back? Why at the first assault dost thou recoil? Trust to ’t, the angry heavens contrive some spite, And dreadful doom t’augment thy cursed hap. Oppose to each revenge thy guilty head, And shun no pain, nor plague fit for thy fact. What shouldst thou fear, that see’st not what to hope?[256] No danger’s left before: all’s at thy back. He safely stands, that stands beyond his harms. Thine (death) is all that east and west can see: For thee we live, our coming is not long: Spare us but whiles we may prepare our graves. Though thou wert slow, we hasten of ourselves. The hour that gave did also take our lives: No sooner men than mortal were we born. I see mine end draws on, I feel my plagues. GUENEVERA. No plague for one ill-born to die as ill. MORDRED. O Queen! my sweet associate in this plunge And desperate plight, behold, the time is come, That either justifies our former faults, Or shortly sets us free from every fear. GUENEVERA. My fear is past, and wedlock love hath won. Retire we thither yet, whence first we ought Not to have stirr’d. Call back chaste faith again. The way that leads to good is ne’er too late: Who so repents is guiltless of his crimes. MORDRED. What means this course? Is Arthur’s wedlock safe, Or can he love, that hath just cause to hate? That nothing else were to be fear’d: Is most apparent, that he hates at home, Whate’er he be whose fancy strays abroad. Think, then, our love is not unknown to him, Whereof what patience can be safely hop’d? Nor love nor sovereignty can bear a peer.