You say that once again? You--impious! Oh what an uprush of night-spawnéd thoughts And what mistrust you wake within my breast! You speak such words as though I had been chosen For altar-beast and you for altar-priest-- By Herod’s very self. Is’t so? At parting There fell from him--I think thereon with horror-- A word of darkness. Answer! JOSEPH. This I give, Soon as the need shall come, soon as I know That he---- MAR. No more can give you level lie, If you, poltroon and vile, charged him with what Numbs thought with fear, unmeasured and unnamed, To sweep your own name sweet in my esteem? I tell you, I but listen to you now Since now, perhaps, before I make an end, He may step through the door and strike you down. Be silent then for aye or speak at once. JOSEPH. And if ’twere so? I say not it is so, But if it were? What other would it be Than confirmation of the thing you feel, Than noble proof he loves as ne’er before A man has loved his wife? MAR. What is’t you say? Methinks my ears have heard that word before! JOSEPH. Why, I’d have thought ’twould please your quick of pride To know he felt not death was half so bitter As this, the thought he’d---- MAR. Come, what will you stake Myself can bring it for you to an end? --As this, the thought he’d leave me here behind him Amid a world where lives an Antony. JOSEPH. Well--yes then! But I say not that he’s said it-- MAR. He’s said it? He has--Oh, what has he not? Oh, that he came to end it! JOSEPH. Mariamne! (_Aside._) My feet are in the gin! True, I did naught But what I must; and yet a horror grips me That he--before my eyes comes Aristobulus. Accurséd be the dead that flings a shadow Ere it steps into life! MAR. Like to a crazy blister of the brain Whose swollen puffiness at times will split, So was it--From this hour my life begins. Until to-day I dreamed! SCENE 6 THE SAME. SALOME. [_Enter a_ SERVANT, _followed by_ SALOME. SALOME (_to the_ SERVANT). Were you forbidden To grant to any entry unannounced? I take the blame. JOSEPH. Salome, you? SALOME.