Stay--not by your own hand nor yet by murder, But by your paramount arbiter you fall. The King comes speedily to fix your fate. GYGES. To dying men, no matter who they be, One last request is granted free. You will Be loath t’ abridge my dead man’s beggar-right, I know you cannot do it. Then let me go! [RHODOPE _makes a gesture of refusal_. I have done all that in me lay. Then come What is to come. I bear no whit of blame. [_Enter_ KANDAULES. RHOD. (_to_ KANDAULES). I did not err. There was i’ the sleeping chamber A man concealed. GYGES. Yes, King--the truth that I But shadowed to you since the courage broke To make confession. Now the veil is raised And worthy death I stand before you here. KAN. Gyges! GYGES. Even so. With both these eyes of mine I did a nameless thing such as my hands here Could never overpass, could never equal, Though I should draw the sword on you and her. RHOD. ’Tis so. GYGES. In sooth I knew not, ay, can swear it. Women to me are strange; but as the boy Thrusts at some wondrous bird a clutching hand Rough with its crush, because its tender nature He knows not, though his will was to caress, E’en so I brought the Jewel of this world To ruin, all unwitting what I did. RHOD. His word is noble. Woe to him and me That it is vain! GYGES. When the Castalian fount, Which god-delighting men have for their drinking, And which from shuttling colours takes a glance As though culled blossoms from a rainbow-garden By Iris’ very hands thereon were strown, When in this fount, that from Parnassus springs, A troubling stone is flung, it falls to boiling And starts in wheeling turmoil hilly-high. Then sings no more on earth the nightingale Nor evermore the lark, and in the heights A dumbness holds the Muses’ holy choir, And never knows the harmony returning Till a grim stream wraps the foolhardy flinger Gnashing him down into its lightless deeps. Thus is it also with a woman’s soul. KAN. Gyges, I am no villain! GYGES. Lord, you are Rhodope’s husband, shield and shelter both, And must be her avenger. KAN. More than all I’m Man, and for the sacrilege myself Committed, suffer no man else to die. GYGES. King, what is saved by this? KAN. Myself. GYGES. He raves; Give him no hearkening ear. RHOD. My Lord and Consort, What word was that? I scarce believe myself If you repeat it not. KAN. You speak for me. You shall not plead excuse for me--you shall Tell all just as it came. RHOD.