Bellona. What is to be done? Mary-Jane. Herminia is dressing Annie Smith like a bride in satin and lace; and she and Antinous will lead her into the presence of the mad boy, whom we are to have here. As it was our dresses as much as our maturity that caught his fancy, I have no doubt that, mistaking Annie for a new goddess, he will fall at her feet with some hyperbolical apostrophe, as he did at yours. Bellona. A very likely thing. I hope he may not recognise her.--Clown. Clown. Your will? Bellona. Fetch hither Ringan Deane. Clown. Where is he? Bellona. Find him. [Clown goes out. Mary-Jane. Have you two quarrelled? Bellona. O no! He's a patient, strong man, that clown. Mary-Jane. He's a handsome fellow. Bellona. I have eyes. Enter Edmund and May Montgomery. May [aside]. We're not the last: we're safe from mockery. Edmund. Why, where are all the rest, good amazon? Bellona. Why, where's your wondrous plot, good earl? Edmund. Fate knows. Bellona. Fate!--how you startle me! I brooded once On destiny, and thus said with myself: I will not do as other women do, Marry a man, and be one couple more; I will not be as other women are, Whom the world praises, and who deem themselves Happy as earth can make them: I will be Unwomanly, and scorn what women love. Edmund. A new Diana. Bellona. No, a thousand times! Why will you think what may be must have been? My thought----But I'll not tell you; for to tell Would kill it; then I could not give it shape. Always I read of fate and talked of it, Of birth-stars, and our own polarity, And of the orient, iron dooms-day book, Of former lives that we have led, whose deeds Determine this, of unrelenting life-- The ecstasy that with the flowers we share, The crisis that for ever shakes the world; And I would ebb and flow with hope and fear, But mostly breast the adamant with waves Of seething blood, I curbed, I quelled----How's this? You spoke of fate, and struck a resonant string. Edmund. Then, you're a fatalist. Bellona. I fear I am. Edmund. You speak more truly than you think. Your fear Is just; for brooding souls that talk of fate, And of their helpless, brute plasticity In mighty, thoughtless hands, bring down the woes They dread and should defy: the timid blood Is first to be diseased; and winged death Falls on the shrinking quarry. Amazon, Face fate and stare it down. Why, this is fate, This only: other slave we cannot have Than these same hands and feet of circumstance. Master it, master it; or fire and flood Are drowned and scorched like moths and drops of dew! The Arab fisher's jinn; unsealed, diffused, He fills and suffocates the universe; Inurned, a plaything, or a marshalled host. You see, I know the western prophet, too. May. O, let us lie and talk of love and fate Here on the daisies till the night comes down!