You pose me with your riddles. First the oath “I kill myself if he return no more!” Then bitter coldness when he came, so froward That he was mortified as keen as I Rejoiced; and now again the deepest mourning! I’d gladly see the man who comprehends you. MAR. If ’tis so hard, why do you plague yourself? ALEX. And then the tart repugnance in the manner With which you fend Soemus to his distance! His looks betray there’s something on his heart---- MAR. You think so? ALEX. Ay, and he would make avowal But dare not venture it; he would perhaps, If he should see you leap into the Jordan, Be dubious if he were privileged To rescue you from death; and he were right, For this blunt gracelessness is past all bounds. MAR. You’ll own at least that Herod cannot say I probed the virtue of his friend, and lured His secret, if he has one, out of him With cozening-tongued duplicity. No, no; It lies on the knees of God if I should learn it; And my heart says I take no risk therein.[13] [_Enter_ SAMEAS, _with fetters on his hands_. SCENE 2 THE SAME. SAMEAS. SAMEAS. The Lord is great! MAR. He is. ALEX. You free, and yet In fetters? Yet one riddle more! SAMEAS. These fetters I lay not by again. Jerusalem Shall day by day have brought to its remembrance That Jonah’s progeny in prison sat. ALEX. How came you out, then? Did you bribe the gaolers? SAMEAS. What, I? the gaolers? ALEX. True, with what I know not. You still have on your shirt of camel’s hair, And that they freed you for a wild bees’ nest Which you, with every hollow tree familiar, Could have betrayed to them for ransom-price-- That I misdoubt, for there’s enough of honey. SAMEAS. Why, what a question! ’Twas Soemus’ self That oped the gates for me. MAR. How could he dare that? SAMEAS. How then? And was’t not you that gave him orders? MAR. I? SAMEAS. No? And yet I thought ’twas what he said. I may have erred, for I was just then saying The last psalm backwards-way when he came in And slackly gave him only half my ear. Well, good! It seems the Lord has done’t, and I Must go unto the Temple there to thank Him, For I have naught to do in David’s castle. MAR. The Lord! SAMEAS. The Lord. Was I endungeoned justly? MAR. The times are now no more in which the Lord Spoke with the naked word unto His People. We have instead the Law; that speaks for Him. Extinguished is the Pillar of Fire and Cloud Through which our Fathers in the Wilderness Were shown the paths he led them, and the Prophets Are dumb as He. ALEX.