’Tis so? Ye gods, Be merry! I have railed, yet knew not _this_. KAN. Speak, Gyges. [_Exit_. GYGES. Queen, if you but had the knowledge How he extolled you ever, and how dull, How brutish dull, each flaming word I heard Because the birds that from the bushes rustled Scaping my arrow’s range the while he spoke Allured my eyes--if you should tell yourself How sorely such a listless childlike bearing He took for signal of a hid mistrust And a half-given belief, although it sprang From vagrant mood--how sore it must have stung him; Had you but seen us both--nay only once, When side by side we roamed and loitered on Amid the forest, he in all his glow, I in my chill indifference staring stockish For coloured pebbles scattered on the earth The while his fingers pointed to a sunrise; Oh! sure I know your look again were mild, For he was like a priest in whom a flame Irradiant burns, and who, his god to honour, Would kindle it within another’s bosom, And when o’ermastered, passionately heedless He bares of veil the Holy Mysteries That stupored senses thus more swiftly waken And idols false meet surer disenthronement, Fails he so sore that he be not reprieved? RHOD. _(with a gesture of repulse_). He gave his right of husband to your keeping? GYGES. Name it not thus! RHOD. No need then at your wine To seize upon his hand and in the act To draw therefrom the ring, as I had thought it-- He gave you back the ring himself; you came, Perchance so bold, along with him? GYGES. How can Your heart believe it, Queen? RHOD. Your years are youthful-- Your thought’s too noble---- GYGES. Was I then his villein, And has he e’er required that such I be? Nay, nay, O Queen, nothing extenuate; Your word of doom stands fast; and deem it not A heartless word, ’tis mild. I took the way That deep I feel I never should have taken, But I have borne my curse with me as well. I was grown ripe for death because I knew That every good which life can e’er bestow Was squandered waste, and if it chanced that night I found him not, and o’er the hearth’s pollution My swift-let blood poured not its cleansing wash, The blame is not on me--I courted him. Oh, had I borne my purpose through and dared him, Naught but an echo in your soul would now Recall a dying shudder at the murderer And make your breathing all the sweetlier drawn! Ay, but your lord had stood revealed as saviour Nor ever been before so fiery-kissed. RHOD.