But if you had been large enough of loving To grant me grace for all that, out of loving, I did, I never would have asked you thus. Now that I know how small your love is, now I must re-ask the question; for whate’er Your love vouchsafe me as a bond of surety Cannot be greater than your love itself. And Love to which Life is a treasure higher Than the Beloved, is to me a nothing. MAR. Yet am I silent! HEROD. Then I damn myself The mouth whose overpride disdains to swear No other one has kissed it, nevermore Myself to kiss till such it lowly do. Yea, if there were a means could give me potence Your memory within my heart t’ extinguish, And if the drastic stab that pierced my eyes, Oblivioning the mirror of your beauty, Could also give your image to oblivion, Now at this very hour I’d stab them through. MAR. Be your mood’s master, Herod! For perhaps Even in this Now you’ve Fate within your hands And you can guide it wheresoe’er you will. To every man there comes the point of time When to himself the steerer of his star Gives o’er the reins. And this alone is ill-- That he knows not the point of time; it may be Each one that past him rolls. I have monition For you ’tis this one; therefore keep a check! The track of life your chart is now designing, That track, perchance, unto the end you wander. Will you do that in the wild rush of wrath? HEROD. I fear but half the truth’s in your monition. The turning-point is there, but ’tis for you. For I, what wish I then? why this--naught further, A means wherewith to frighten bogy-dreams.[12] MAR. I’ll understand you not! I’ve borne you children, Have thought of them! Then you may ask yourself What’s possible. HEROD. Who’s silent, even as you, Wakes the misthought he has no heart that dares To say the truth, yet has no will to lie. MAR. No further! HEROD. Nay, no further; and farewell! And if I come again misgrudge it me Not all too sorely. MAR. Herod! HEROD. Be assured I take no more the thing I took to-day, A greeting wrested. MAR. Nay, ’twill be no more A needful thing. (_To Heaven._) Eternal, guide his heart! I gave him pardon for a brother’s murder, I was prepared his deathward way to follow, I am so still; and can a mortal more? Thou didst what ne’er before thou didst--Thou rolledst The wheel of time aback; it stands once more Even as it erewhile stood. Then let him now Take other course, and I forget what’s happened. Forget it even as if in heat of fever He’d dealt me with his sword the stroke of death And bound himself my wound that I grew whole. (_To_ HEROD.) You’ll come again? HEROD.