Basil: Fiends, nymphs and saints! it's come! tears in your eyes! Zoe, stop it. Would you have mine leak and drive me to a monastery for shelter!
Zoe (sings sadly and absently):
She lay by the river, dead,
A broken reed in her hand
A nymph whom an idle god had wed
And led from her maidenland.
Basil: O, had I been born a heathen!
Zoe: He told me, Basil, I should live, a great lady, at his castle. And they should kiss my hand and courtesy to me. He meant but jest—I feared.—I feared! But—I loved him!
Basil: Now, my damsel—!
Zoe (sings):
The god was the great god Jove,
Two notes would the bent reed blow,
The one was sorrow, the other love
Enwove with a woman's woe.
Basil: Songs and snakes! Give me instead a Dominican's funeral! I'd as lief crawl bare-kneed to Rome and mouth the Pope's heel. O blessed Turks with their remorseless harems!—Zoe!
Zoe (sings):
She lay by the river dead;
And he at feasting forgot.
The gods, shall they be disquieted
By dread of a mortal's lot?
(She wipes her eyes, trembles, looks at him and laughs hysterically.)
Bacchus! my Bacchus! with wet eyes! Up, up, lad! there's many a cup for us yet!