HELENA. O, were that all! I think not on my father, And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him. What was he like? I have forgot him; my imagination Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s. I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it, he is so above me. In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself: The hind that would be mated by the lion Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour; to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In our heart’s table,—heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here? Enter Parolles. One that goes with him: I love him for his sake, And yet I know him a notorious liar, Think him a great way fool, solely a coward; Yet these fix’d evils sit so fit in him That they take place when virtue’s steely bones Looks bleak i’ th’ cold wind: withal, full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly. PAROLLES. Save you, fair queen! HELENA. And you, monarch! PAROLLES. No. HELENA. And no. PAROLLES. Are you meditating on virginity? HELENA. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? PAROLLES. Keep him out. HELENA. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance. PAROLLES. There is none. Man setting down before you will undermine you and blow you up. HELENA. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up! Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men? PAROLLES. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold a companion. Away with it! HELENA. I will stand for’t a little, though therefore I die a virgin.