No, no; there is no kissing twice upon the heart of death.... How fair thou art so!... It is the first time I have seen thee near.... It is strange, we think that we have seen each other because we have gone by two steps apart; but everything changes the moment the lips touch.... There, thou must be let to have thy will.... I stretch my arms wide to admire thee, as if thou wert no longer mine; and then I draw them nearer till I touch thy kisses and perceive only eternal bliss.... There needed us this supernatural light!... [_He kisses her again_.] Ah! What hast thou done? Take care! we are upon a crest of rock that overhangs the water that gives us light. Do not step back. It was time.... Do not turn too abruptly. I was dazzled.... ALLADINE. [_Turning and looking at the blue water that illuminates them_.] Oh!... PALOMIDES. It is as if the sky had flowed hither.... ALLADINE. It is full of moveless flowers.... PALOMIDES. It is full of moveless flowers and strange.... Hast thou seen the largest there that blooms beneath the others? It seems to live a cadenced life.... And the water ... Is it water?... It seems more beautiful, more pure, more blue than all the water in the world.... ALLADINE. I dare not look upon it longer.... PALOMIDES. See how about us all is luminous.... The light dares hesitate no longer, and we kiss each other in the vestibules of heaven.... Seest thou the precious stones that gem the vaults, drunken with life, that seem to smile on us; and the thousands and thousands of glowing blue roses that climb along the pillars?... ALLADINE. Oh!... I heard!... PALOMIDES. What? ALLADINE. Some one striking the rocks.... PALOMIDES. No, no; it is the golden gates of a new Paradise, that open in our souls and sing upon their hinges!... ALLADINE. Listen.... again, again!... PALOMIDES (_with voice suddenly changed_). Yes; it is there.... It is at the bottom of the bluest vaults.... ALLADINE. They are coming to.... PALOMIDES. I hear the sound of iron on the rock.... They have walled up the door or cannot open it.... It is the picks grating against the stone.... His soul has told him we were happy.... [A silence; then a stone is detached at the very end of the vault, and a ray of daylight breaks into the cavern.] ALLADINE. Oh!... PALOMIDES. It is another light.... [Motionless and anxious, they watch other stones detach themselves slowly in an insufferable light, and fall one by one; while the light, entering in more and more resistless floods, reveals to them little by little the gloom of the cavern they had thought marvellous. The miraculous lake becomes wan and sinister; the precious stones about them are extinguished, and the glowing roses appear as the stains and rotten rubbish that they are. At last, the whole side of rock falls abruptly into the crypt. The sunlight enters, dazzling. Calls and songs are heard without. Alladine and Palomides recoil.]