O Heaven! Deceitful ears! "--and a voice whispered 'May Montgomery.' She accused her fancy of cheating her, and proceeded with her reading----" Edmund [within]. May Montgomery! May. O me! this voice is agonising! Fancy, you will make me mad! "--when the voice again whispered her name. She exclaimed on fancy for torturing her so, and laying the book upon the ground, was about to stretch herself, leaning on her elbows with her fingers in her ears, when a shadow came----" Good my eyes have you leagued with my ears, then? There is a shadow! Oh! Re-enter Edmund. Edmund. Turn not away. Your hands late held my book. Take now the hand That wrote the book. May. Are you a ghost, a ghoul, A vampire, come to plague me for my sin In killing him with scorn whose form you bear? I beg no mercy, for the doom is just. But no; you are an angel; it must be: No spirit foul could harbour in your shade: And you have come to tell me I'm forgiven. Edmund. I'm neither ghost, nor ghoul, nor angel, May: I am your lover in carnation true, A bodiment much better than of yore, Edmund, with health restored and joy complete, Since it is crowned with what he never hoped, The freely-given diadem of your love. May. I think you surely are the devil, sir. This acting is too good: you're like him too. Edmund. Him!--whom?--the devil? May. O, no! Earl Edmund.--Love, I know you now. [He offers to embrace her. No, sir; I will go to the grave unkissed by any man, if I do not find the true Earl Edmund. I think I must begin and search for him. I wait and wait, and time is all that comes and goes. When I think that on every hour I bestow a treasure of hope, and that some day I may have entertained so many hours as to have spent all my fortune in that kind; and when I remember that all this expense may be waste, for my love may be in heaven; and when I think that if he be alive every hour removes my memory further from him; that he may love another, that he may be married, then I cling to the skirts of every parting hour, and sigh at the knell that tolls its departure and the advent of the next.--But let us act again.-- O yes, I know you, Edmund, and I love you. But can you then forgive me for my scorn? Edmund. Forgive--forgive? There's nothing to forgive. May. O, I was very foolish, very young! I did not know how great a thing love is: That woman's love is like the spacious sea, And man's love like the mirroring of the sky. O, I knew nothing! Yet, I should have known. Now, I know all; your book has been my school, My manual, my cyclopaedia: It tells me of the all in all of love, And teaches that its soul cannot be told, That action is its highest eloquence. Edmund. The silence of your lips, my gentle love, Is richer, rosier, than the ruddiest gold; The diamonds and the rubies of your speech Become them well. May. You act too warmly, sir. Edmund. I do not act at all; I am myself. May.