Remembering that they may call her mother!
All the bright world I breathe because of her,
Laughter and roses, day-song of the sea,
Not bitterness and loneliness and blight!
All the bright world,
Of voices, dear as waking to the dead —
Voices of love and tender earthly hopes —
O, all the beauty I was once forbid!
For O! —
She lifted me, a lonely convent weed,
A cloister thing unvisited of dew,
Withering and untended and afar
From the remembered ruin of my home,
And here has planted me in happiness.
Then, for her, all I am!
Vittia. Or – hope to be?
Yolanda. The price, say, of your silence. – I am weary.
Vittia. And would be rid of me.
Yolanda. The price, the price.
Vittia. It is (low and ashamed) that you renounce Amaury's love.
[A pause.
Yolanda. Amaury's love… You then would rend me there
Where not Eternity could heal the wound
Though all the River of God might be for balm!
Cruelty like to this you could not do?
[Waits a moment.
A swallow on the battlements to-day
Fell from the hawk: you soothed and set it free.
This, then, you would not – !
Vittia. Yes.
Yolanda. You cannot!
Vittia. Yes.
Yolanda (wrung for a moment then calm).
I had forgotten, you are of Venice – Venice
Whose burdening is vast upon this land.
Good-night.
Vittia. And you despise me!
Yolanda. More I loathe
That love of him has led your thought so low.
[Is going.
Vittia. Stay! If you leave and do not choose at once —
[Sounds are heard at the gates.
Who's that?.. (starts). Amaury?.. You've expected him?
[The chains fall.
Your purpose, then! Is it now to renounce
And force him from you or to have me breathe
To Renier Lusignan the one word
That will transmute his wrong to madness?
Say it! For centuries have stained these walls
But never a wife; never —