As in one biting hour hath turned my tide
From genial tropic to the frozen pole,

And sunk the blood to zero. 'Tis sheer waste
To send emotion gadding to the moon,

Which should be stored for vital warmth within.
Eat fat, my soul, and clothe thyself with fur,
And in thy clay-built hovel house with beasts;
So live, a mummy with the heart-tick heard,
As do the wiser Lapps! Helene here
Loved her old sire.

What profits it ?

—a man,

The heart of him so saturate through and through

With lust of lucre, that his brain in sleep

Hoards it from knowledge of his waking self!

Did her love suck the poison from his soul?
Corcilius was my friend. Friendship, a name
For all that's brief and brittle, henceforth I deem
No better than a vantage-coign, wherefrom
To plant the secret dagger, and the clinch
Of her close hand the snapping of a trap.
Did my trust in him keep Corcilius true?
"She too may fail you look to it,” said he,
And with that bitter farewell seemed to add
“As I am false to you, and Proszka false,
And all your subjects, as these wretched serfs

To their more wretched master, as thyself

To thine own self, and all men to each other."

Enter HELENE unnoticed.

And she did fail me! she who said "Believe
Whatever most is unbelievable,

Rather than disbelieve the faith of friends."
Oh, Heinrich, thou art wound about thy throat
With triple folds of treachery, hydra-formed,
But faced as a fair woman; and though fortune
Should give me back my country, and disprove
Corcilius of unkindness, I shall never

Pass from the shadow of my love's eclipse.

Heinrich !

HELENE.

HEINRICH.

Her ghost! Then, thou art dead, Helene! [HELENE advances and touches him.

Thy hand is warm, thou livest! I feel, I see thee! But where is thy false lover?

HELENE.

Close at hand.

If faithless doubt were crimeful, so might he
Challenge creation and not find his match.

HEINRICH.

What! hath he flung thee from his heart love-cloyed

So soon?

HELENE.

I know not: I have come to see.

HEINRICH.

I have no will to fence with thee in words:

All this is idle. Say, wherefore didst thou leave us, And why returning addest scorn to scorn?

HELENE.

Scant claim hast thou to ask; but I will answer.

'Twas for the sake of one who loved me well,

To seek lost treasure.

And lost the love.

I have found the treasure,

HEINRICH.

God help me! so have I.

HELENE.

What scorn is there in this? what wrong to thee?

HEINRICH.

I scarce can look into thine eyes and read
A guilty soul behind them; yet believe me
That by thine action thou hast slain belief,
Slain love of man for woman, friend for friend,
Slain awe, slain reverence, and what else beside

Still breathed of heaven within this earth-bound

breast.

HELENE.

Am I so multiplied in villainies,

So manifold a murderess? Then, slay me.

HEINRICH.

Ah, if I dared! so might we die together.

HELENE.

But why not live? (Aside) Was ever love so blind?

HEINRICH.

So, the rich banquet of Corcilius failing,
Heinrich's half-loaf is better than no bread!

HELENE.

I cannot purge thy vision. Matched with thee
Self-blinded Edipus was Argus-eyed:

By thy bleared sight Tiresias and the rest
Saw keen as Lynceus; for their inward orbs,
Through bodily darkness made more bright, beheld
The viewless things of heaven and thoughts of men,
Falsehood from truth discerning.

Infidel!

Hast thou forgotten what mad dance of doubt
That will-o'-the-wisp Suspicion once ere now
Led thee, and landed in what groundless mire,
And how I chid thee to a nobler mind,
When Arnfeld was the traitor? Now that I
Myself am mark and target for the same
Rash arrow-flight of censure, can I stoop
To prove my own fame stainless, e'en to thee?
Nay, though a breath should clear it. Many a mist
Born of damp valleys hides the mountain-height,