LOCRINE. Yea, truly—when their bidding sealed me thine. GUENDOLEN. Thy smile is as a flame that plays and flits. LOCRINE. Yet at my heart thou knowest what fire there sits. GUENDOLEN. Not love’s—not love’s—toward me love burns not there. LOCRINE. What wouldst thou have me search therein and swear? GUENDOLEN. Swear by the faith none seeking there may find— LOCRINE. Then—by the faith that lives not in thy kind— GUENDOLEN. Ay—women’s faith is water. Then, by men’s— LOCRINE. Yea—by Locrine’s, and not by Guendolen’s— GUENDOLEN. Swear thou didst never love me more than now. LOCRINE. I swear it—not when first we kissed. And thou? GUENDOLEN. I cannot give thee back thine oath again. LOCRINE. If now love wane within thee, lived it then? GUENDOLEN. I said not that it waned. I would not swear— LOCRINE. That it was ever more than shadows were? GUENDOLEN. —Thy faith and heart were aught but shadow and fire. LOCRINE. But thou, meseems, hast loved—thy son and sire. GUENDOLEN. And not my lord: I cross and thwart him still. LOCRINE. Thy grief it is that wounds me—not thy will. GUENDOLEN. Wound? if I would, could I forsooth wound thee? LOCRINE. I think thou wouldst not, though thine hands were free. GUENDOLEN. These hands, now bound in wedlock fast to thine? LOCRINE. Yet were thine heart not then dislinked from mine. GUENDOLEN. Nay, life nor death, nor love whose child is hate, May sunder hearts made one but once by fate. Wrath may come down as fire between them—life May bid them yearn for death as man for wife— Grief bid them stoop as son to father—shame Brand them, and memory turn their pulse to flame— Or falsehood change their blood to poisoned wine— Yet all shall rend them not in twain, Locrine. LOCRINE. Who knows not this? but rather would I know What thought distempers and distunes thy woe. I came to wed my grief awhile to thine For love’s sake and for comfort’s— GUENDOLEN.