When the guests have departed, Macbeth is still absorbed by the terrifying possibilities of disclosure that were suggested by the apparition. Banquo, who can so easily become visible, may hint the manner of his death to somebody, to any thing, making the dumbest object voluble with it,--may even make a stone move to hit the murderer, or a tree's branch point speakingly to him, "the secretest man of blood." But his wife says nothing either to refute the fear or to make him ashamed of it. What palsy has been laid upon that ruffling tongue? It is not silent, as some critics fancy, because her love sets in to pity and to spare him; nor silent because the exigency has passed away, nor because Middleton struck out some speech of hers,--but silent simply from exhaustion. See, between the lines of Macbeth's mood, how the overtaxed woman droops, utterly frayed away, although the guests relieve her by departure. Exhaustion so preoccupies her that love itself is too faint to pity or to cheer, and her only thought is to get to bed. She has begun to feel the drift of a hopeless future, against which she has no strength, by contending, to regain the old mooring-ground where they cut loose and allowed an unseen current to clutch the slim bark. Neither curiosity nor self-interest can rouse her when Macbeth mentions that he has strange things in head which he means to carry to performance. "You lack the season of all natures, sleep," is all that her tired nature has left to say. Her fortitude just eked her out to reach the gracious action that dismissed the guests, as she wished "A kind good-night to all!" Yes, good-night to all,--to us also. She gains the shelter of her chamber: then she entirely disappears from the action of the tragedy, to sicken in seclusion with the consciousness that her fatal love has purveyed successive murders for her household. She can be of no further use to Shakspeare now: such a terrible requisition of genius has exhausted her; she is removed from our view and consigned to the offices of women. For the courage that was screwed to the sticking-place was screwed by love's wrest one turn too far. But another kind of woman--massive, cruel, prompted by unmixed ambition, guided by pure hatefulness--would have had no trouble in assuming the dogged resolution with which Macbeth began henceforth to outface Fate. Not so this soul, who has known "how tender 'tis to love the babe" that milks her. "The tackle of her heart is crack'd and burned; And all the shrouds wherewith her life should sail Are turned to one thread, one little hair." She will soon be "a clod and module of confounded royalty."