Why Must he not know you? MICHAL Ask me not, lad, now; But go a little. LAD Yes. [_He sets down the water-skin and goes._] MICHAL [_Delaying, then in a loud voice._] Unclean! Unclean! [_Conceals her face in her hair._] DAVID Who crieth here? MICHAL Unclean! DAVID [_Appearing._] Who cries unclean? Poor leper in these wilds, who art thou? MICHAL One Outcast and faint, forlorn! DAVID Then you have come To one more bitter outcast than yourself, One who has less than this lone void to give, This sterile solitude and sun, this scene Of leaden desolation that makes mad. Who has no ease but cave or shading rock, Or the still moon, or stars that glide the night. One over whom---- MICHAL Yet, pity! DAVID The pale hours Flow dead into eternity. MICHAL Ah, yet…! DAVID My cloak, then, for thy tattered limbs. Or, no-- This chain of Ophir for thy every need. Once was it dear, but should be so no more. [_Flinging it to her._] Have it, and with it vanish memory Out of my breast---- MICHAL No, no. DAVID And from me fall Link upon link her loveliness that bound. MICHAL Oh, do not! DAVID Woman…? MICHAL Nothing. A chain like this I once beheld wind undulantly bright O’er Michal, the king’s daughter. DAVID Woman, the king’s? MICHAL Pity! DAVID Who are you? MICHAL Stay! Unclean! DAVID A spy? A spy of Saul and hypocrite have crept Hither to learn…? MICHAL Have heed--unclean! DAVID How then Wandering come you here? MICHAL Unclean! Unclean! DAVID My brain is overfull of fever, mad. Almost and I had touched thy peril, held Thy hideous contagion. MICHAL Wrong! DAVID Then who Art thou to know and speak of her, of Michal? MICHAL One who has served the king. DAVID And you have seen Michal, you have beheld her? MICHAL Once, when she In face was fairer and in heart than now They say she is. DAVID And heard her speak? MICHAL A night Under the leaves of Gibeah--when she Sang with another--David. DAVID Say no more. MICHAL