Gormflaith:

I dare not leave the Queen ... Yes, yes, I come.

Lear:

No, you are better here: the guard would see you.

Gormflaith:

Not when we reach the pathway near the apple-yard.

[They rise.]

Lear:

Girl, you are changed: you yield more beauty so.

[They go out hand in hand by the doorway at the back. As they pa.s.s the crumpled letter GORMFLAITH drops her handkerchief on it, then picks up handkerchief and letter together and thrusts them into her bosom as she pa.s.ses out.]

Hygd (fingering back the bed-curtain again):

How have they vanished? What are they doing now?

Gormflaith (singing outside):

If you have a mind to kiss me You shall kiss me in the dark: Yet rehea.r.s.e, or you might miss me-- Make my mouth your noontide mark.

See, I prim and pout it so; Now take aim and ... No, no, no.

Shut your eyes, or you'll not learn Where the darkness soon shall hide me: If you will not, then, in turn, I'll shut mine. Come, have you spied me?

[GORMFLAITH'S voice grows fainter as the song closes.]

Hygd:

Does he remember love-ways used with me?

Shall I never know? Is it too near?

I'll watch him at his wooing once again, Though I peer up at him across my grave-sill.

[She gets out of bed and takes several steps toward the garden doorway; she totters and sways, then, turning, stumbles back to the bed for support.]

Limbs, will you die? It is not yet the time.

I know more discipline: I'll make you go.

[She fumbles along the bed to the head, then, clinging against the wall, drags herself toward the back of the room.]

It is too far. I cannot see the wall.

I will go ten more steps: only ten more.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

Sundown is soon to-day: it is cold and dark.

Now ten steps more, and much will have been done.

One. Two. Three. Four. Ten.

Eleven. Twelve. Sixteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

Twenty-one. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Thirty. Thirty-one.

At last the turn. Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty.

Now only once again. Two. Three.

What do the voices say? I hear too many.

The door: but here there is no garden ... Ah!

[She holds herself up an instant by the door-curtains; then she reels and falls, her body in the room, her head and shoulders beyond the curtains.]

[GONERIL enters by the door beyond the bed, carrying the filled cup carefully in both hands.]

Goneril:

Where are you? What have you done? Speak to me.

[Turning and seeing HYGD, she lets the cup fall and leaps to the open door by the bed.]

Merryn, hither, hither ... Mother, O mother!

[She goes to HYGD. MERRYN enters.]

Merryn:

Princess, what has she done? Who has left her?

She must have been alone.

Goneril:

Where is Gormflaith?