Christian.
What say you?
Roxane.
What say you? 'Tis your fault if I ran risks!
Your letters turned my head! Ah! all this month,
How many!—and the last one ever bettered
The one that went before!
Christian.
The one that went before! What! for a few
Inconsequent love-letters!
Roxane.
Inconsequent love-letters! Hold your peace!
Ah! you cannot conceive it! Ever since
That night, when, in a voice all new to me,
Under my window you revealed your soul—
Ah! ever since I have adored you! Now
Your letters all this whole month long!—meseemed
As if I heard that voice so tender, true,
Sheltering, close! Thy fault, I say! It drew me,
The voice o' th' night! Oh! wise Penelope
Would ne'er have stayed to broider on her hearth-stone,
If her Ulysses could have writ such letters!
But would have cast away her silken bobbins,
And fled to join him, mad for love as Helen!
Christian.
But…
Roxane.
But… I read, read again—grew faint for love;
I was thine utterly. Each separate page
