Not a moment of intermission! Let's look to it--if it indeed be so-- NORTH. See--hear Desdemona pleading for Cassio--see, hear Othello saying--"Not now, sweet Desdemona;" and then again--"Prythee, no more: let him come when he will--I will deny thee nothing." And again-- "I will deny thee nothing; Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this, To leave me but a little to myself. _Des._ Shall I deny you? no: Farewell, my lord. [_Exit with Emilia._" Turn over leaf after leaf--without allowing yourself to read that dreadful colloquy between the Victim and his Destroyer--but letting it glimmer luridly by--till Desdemona comes back--and Othello, under the power of the Angel Innocence, exclaims-- "If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!-- I'll not believe it." TALBOYS. I behold her! I hear her voice--"gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." "Why is your speech so faint? are you not well? _Oth._ I have a pain upon my forehead here." She drops that fatal handkerchief-- "I am very sorry that you are not well." What touching words! They go out together--ignorant she that her husband hath heartache, worse than any headache-- NORTH. Both to be effectually cured _that night_ by--bleeding. TALBOYS. By bleeding? NORTH. You Owl--yea. TALBOYS. A sudden thought strikes me, Sir. Desdemona has said to Othello-- "Your dinner, and the generous Islanders By you invited, do attend your presence." How's this? This looks like long time-- NORTH. It may look like what it chooses--but we have _proved_ that we are now on the forenoon of the Second Day at Cyprus. TALBOYS. Would it not have been treating them too unceremoniously to have sent round the cards of invitation only the night before? As far as I have been able to learn, they have long been in the habit of giving not less than a week's invitation to dinner at Cyprus. In Glasgow it is commonly three weeks. And why "_generous_?" Because they, the Islanders, have given a series of splendid entertainments to Othello and his Bride. NORTH. No nonsense, sir. Othello had done what you or I would have done, had either of us been Governor of Cyprus. He had invited the "generous Islanders," immediately on his landing, to dine at the Castle "next day." Had he not done so, he had been a hunks. "Generous," you know, as well as I do, means high-born--men of birth--not generous of entertainments. TALBOYS. True, too. But how comes it to be the dinner hour? NORTH. People dined in those days, all England over, about eleven A.M.--probably they dined still earlier in the unfashionable region of Cyprus. You are still hankering after the heresy of long time--but no more of that _now_--let us keep to our demonstration of short time--by-and-by you shall see the Gentleman with the Scythe--the Scythian at full swing--as long as yourself. TALBOYS. I sit corrected. Go on. NORTH.