_Re-enter Clytaemnestra to fetch Cassandra_. _Clyt._ addresses Cassandra in moderate tone, bidding her adapt herself to her new life and yield to those who wish to soften her captivity. [_Cassandra pays no attention and seems gazing into vacancy._] The Chorus endorses Clytaemnestra's advice. At length it occurs to Clytaemnestra that Cassandra cannot speak Greek, and she bids her give some sign. [_No sign, but a shudder convulses her frame._] Thinking she is obstinate Clytaemnestra will wait no longer [_exit Clyt. into Palace to the sacrifice_]. The Chorus renew their advice to Cassandra: _She at length leaves the chariot and suddenly bursts into a cry of horror_. {1038} Then follows, marking the crisis of the drama, a burst of lyrical excitement. The dialogue between Chorus and Cassandra falls into lyrical strophes and antistrophes: Cassandra, by her prophetic gift, can see all that is going on and about to be consummated within the Palace. Her wailings reproach her patron and lover Apollo, who has conducted her to a house of blood; she sees the past murders that have stained the house, she sees the preparations for the present deed, the bath, the net, the axe; then her wailings wax yet wilder as she sees that she herself is to be included in the sacrifice. Meantime her excitement gradually passes over to the Chorus: at first they have mistaken her cries for the ordinary lamentations of captives (and borne their part in the dialogue in the ordinary 'blank verse'); then their emotions are roused (and their speech falls into lyrics) as they recognize the old woes of the family history and remember Cassandra's prophetic fame; as she passes to the deed going on at the moment they feel a thrill of horror, but only half understand and take her words for prophecy of _distant_ events, which they connect with their own forebodings; thus in her struggles to get her words believed Cassandra becomes more and more graphic in her notices of the scene her mental eye is seeing, and the excitement crescendoes until: {1148}