In this tremendous apostrophe, in which she goads herself on to crime, the woman’s nature is plainly seen. Macbeth never prays to have his nature altered, to have any passages to remorse closed up; never fears “compunctious visitings of nature,” nor desires darkness to hide his knife, so that he may not _see_ the wound he makes. But she knows she is a woman, and that she needs to be unsexed, and feels that she is doing violence to her own nature; still her will is strong, and she cries down her misgivings, and resolves to aid Macbeth in his design. Macbeth meets her in this mood. There is no salutation or greeting on his part; he has but one idea,—Duncan is coming, and is to be murdered. His first words are,— “My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night.” Whereupon she asks, “And when goes hence?” “To-morrow,” he answers, and pauses; and adds, “as he purposes.” But in the look and in the pause Lady Macbeth has read his whole sold and intent. There is murder in that look; and she cries:— “O, never Shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men May read strange matters.” There is no explanation between them. He has conveyed all his intention by a look and a gesture, as she herself distinctly says. He has ridden headlong, as fast as horse could carry him, away from the king, full of this one idea; and the king has vainly “coursed him at the heels,” having the purpose, as he himself says, “to be his purveyor.” And his thoughts have spoken in his looks so unmistakably, that they are perfectly understood. If there be any doubt by whom the murder was suggested, it is made perfectly clear by what Lady Macbeth subsequently says to him in the next scene in which they are presented. When he begins to doubt whether the murder had not better be postponed, she says:— “What beast was’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?” It was not of my plotting, but of your own; “Nor time, nor place, did then adhere, and yet you would make both;” you desired it and still desire it, but are afraid of consequences. These words of hers would indeed seem to indicate that he had urged the crime upon her against her will at a previous interview not reported in the play, or perhaps by a letter; for she says distinctly, that when he broke the enterprise to her,— “Nor _time_, nor _place_, Did then adhere, and yet _you would make both_: They have made themselves.”