And this the will that pulls against the chains Her father strove until his hair was hoary. Sorrow and failure made his nature cold. He never loved the child whose woe is shown, And hence her passion for the things which gold Brings in this world of pride, and brings alone. The human heart that’s famished from its birth Turns to the grosser treasures, that is plain. Thus aspiration fallen fills the earth With jungle growths of bitterness and pain. Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine! Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud. False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin. A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed. Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero, With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix, As if she were her Borgia to his Nero, ’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks! However, it must be. The world’s great garden Is not all mine. I only sow the tares. Wheat should be made immune, or else the Warden Should stop their coming in the world’s affairs. But to our hero! Long ere he was born I knew what would repel him and attract. Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn, I can prognosticate before the fact. (_A yellow flame appears._) This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchard Against a maid whose nature with his mated. (_Lurid flames appear._) And this his memory distrait and tortured, Which marked the child with hate because she hated. Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin— But never this our man and woman knew. The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen, Then wed a gentleman upright and true. And thus our hero had a double nature: One half of him was bad, the other good. The devil must exhaust his nomenclature To make this puzzle rightly understood. But when our hero and our heroine met They were at once attracted, the repulsion Was hidden under Passion, with her net Which must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion. The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood, The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them, Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood, Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them. This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play. And then the tragic features rise and deepen. He is a tender husband. When away The serpents from the orchard slyly creep in. Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal, Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life. Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal, Soon she forgets her duty as a wife. You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned, She met exposure and her husband slew her. He lost his reason, for the love she spurned. He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her. (_He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell._) Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows— He could not tell his story—he is dumb. Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows, I call it suffering and martyrdom. The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.” Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation; He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,