Helena: This dread—and shrinking—let me have it!—speak!
You mean—look on me!—mean, your father?—
Antonio: Ah!
It must not! must not!
Helena: Do you mean—he—No!
Let him not touch me even in thy thought,
To me come nearer than a father may!
Antonio: He's swept by the sweet contagion of you, wrapt
In a fierce spell by your effulgent youth.
Helena: Say, say it not! To him I but smiled up—
But smiled!
Antonio: He knew not that such smiles could dawn
In a bare world. And now is flame; would take
Your tenderness into his arms and hear
Seized to him the warm music of your heart.
O, I could be for him—he is my father—
Prometheus stormed and gnawed on Caucasus,
Tantalus ever near the slipping wave,
Or torn and tossed to burning martyrdom—
But not—not this!
Helena: Then, flight! In it we may
Find haven and new nurture for our bliss.
Antonio: Snap from his hunger this one hope, so he
Must starve? Push him who has but learned there's light
Back into yawning blindness? Ah, not flight!
Helena: I know he is your father, and my days
Have been all fatherless, tho' I have made
Me child to every wind that had caress
And to each lonely tree of the deep wood—
Oft envious of those who touch gray hairs,
Or spend desire on filial grief and pang.
And most have you a softness in him kept,
Been to him more than empire's tyranny—
But baffled none can measure him nor trust!
Antonio: Yet must we wait.