From time to time the Princess is interrupted by a messenger from the Tetrarch requesting her to return, but she has no thought for anyone but the prisoner in the cistern. She wishes to see him, but is informed that this is against the Tetrarch's orders. Then she deliberately sets herself to make the Syrian captain disobey his orders. She pleads with him, she plays on his manhood by taunting him with being afraid of his charge, she promises him a flower, "a little green flower." He remains unmoved. The Princess uses all her blandishments to obtain her end; and we can realise what a clever actress would make of the scene as she murmurs, "I will look at you through the muslin veils, I will look at you, Narraboth, it may be I will smile at you. Look at me, Narraboth, look at me." And with more honeyed words and sentences, left unfinished, she induces the young officer to break his trust. The speech consists only of a few lines, and yet gives opportunity for as fine a piece of acting as any player could desire. The soldier yields, and the page suddenly draws attention to the moon, in which he discovers the hand of a dead woman drawing a shroud over herself, though the Syrian can only discover in her a likeness to the object of his infatuation. Jokanaan is brought forth, and inquires for Herod, for whom he prophesies an early death, and then for Herodias, the list of whose iniquities he enumerates. His fierce denunciations terrify Salomé, and in a wonderful piece of word-painting she describes the cavernous depths of his eyes and the terrors lying behind them. The Syrian begs her not to stay, but she is fascinated by the ivory whiteness of the prophet's body and desire enters her soul. Her fiery glances trouble the prophet, he inquires who she is. He refuses to be gazed at by her "golden eyes under her gilded eyelids." She reveals herself, and he bids her begone, referring to her mother's iniquities. His voice moves her and she begs him to speak again. The young Syrian's piteous remonstrance, "Princess! Princess!" is unheeded, and she addresses the prophet once more. Here follows one of the finest and most dangerous scenes of the play, and yet one which, properly treated, is neither irreverent nor, as has been stupidly asserted, immoral.