The Sentimentalists | Page 7

the house, and the time changes to evening of the same day.
The scene is still the garden.)

SCENE VI
ASTRAEA, ARDEN
ASTRAEA: Pardon me if I do not hear you well.
ARDEN: I will not even think you barbarous.
ASTRAEA: I am. I am the object of the chase.
ARDEN: The huntsman draws the wood, then, and not you.

ASTRAEA: At any instant I am forced to run, Or turn in my defence:
how can I be Other than barbarous? You are the cause.
ARDEN: No: heaven that made you beautiful's the cause.
ASTRAEA: Say, earth, that gave you instincts. Bring me down To
instincts! When by chance I speak awhile With our professor, you
appear in haste, Full cry to sight again the missing hare. Away ideas!
All that's divinest flies! I have to bear in mind how young you are.
ARDEN: You have only to look up to me four years, Instead of forty!
ASTRAEA: Sir?

ARDEN There's my misfortune! And worse that, young, I love as a
young man. Could I but quench the fire, I might conceal The
youthfulness offending you so much.
ASTRAEA: I wish you would. I wish it earnestly.
ARDEN: Impossible. I burn.
ASTRAEA: You should not burn.
ARDEN 'Tis more than I. 'Tis fire. It masters will. You would not say I
should not' if you knew fire. It seizes. It devours.
ASTRAEA: Dry wood.
ARDEN: Cold wit! How cold you can be! But be cold, for sweet You
must be. And your eyes are mine: with them I see myself: unworthy to
usurp The place I hold a moment. While I look I have my happiness.
ASTRAEA: You should look higher.
ARDEN: Through you to the highest. Only through you! Through you
The mark I may attain is visible, And I have strength to dream of

winning it. You are the bow that speeds the arrow: you The glass that
brings the distance nigh. My world Is luminous through you, pure
heavenly, But hangs upon the rose's outer leaf, Not next her heart.
Astraea! my own beloved!
ASTRAEA: We may be excellent friends. And I have faults.
ARDEN: Name them: I am hungering for more to love.
ASTRAEA: I waver very constantly: I have No fixity of feeling or of
sight. I have no courage: I can often dream Of daring: when I wake I
am in dread. I am inconstant as a butterfly, And shallow as a brook
with little fish! Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy's net, But at
a touch straight dive! I am any one's, And no one's! I am vain. Praise of
my beauty lodges in my ears. The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe A poet, though he
praised me to my face.
ARDEN: Never had poet so divine a fount To drink of!
ASTRAEA: Have I given you more to love
ARDEN: More! You have given me your inner mind, Where
conscience in the robes of Justice shoots Light so serenely keen that in
such light Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,' As your friend Osier
says, might show some blot. Seraphs might! More to love? Oh! these
dear faults Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls With garlands.
All the fear is, that you trifle, Feigning them.
ASTRAEA: For what purpose?
ARDEN: Can I guess?
ASTRAEA:
I think 'tis you who have the trifler's note. My hearing is acute, and
when you speak, Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly. Your
Osier quotation jars. Beware! Why were you absent from our

meeting-place This morning?
.
ARDEN: I was on the way, and met Your uncle Homeware
ASTRAEA: Ah!
ARDEN: He loves you.
ASTRAEA: He loves me: he has never understood. He loves me as a
creature of the flock; A little whiter than some others. Yes; He loves
me, as men love; not to uplift; Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize.
For him I am a woman and a widow One of the flock, unmarked save
by a brand. He said it!--You confess it! You have learnt To share his
error, erring fatally.
ARDEN: By whose advice went I to him?
ASTRAEA: By whose? Pursuit that seemed incessant: persecution.
Besides, I have changed since then: I change; I change; It is too true I
change. I could esteem You better did you change. And had you heard
The noble words this morning from the mouth Of our professor,
changed were you, or raised Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame
and flutter, High as eternal snows. What said he else, My uncle
Homeware?
ARDEN: That you were not free: And that he counselled us to use our
wits.
ASTRAEA: But I am free I free to be ever free!