Vittia. None?
Yolanda. Your tone...!
(Realising with gradual horror.) The still insinuation! You would do it!
This is the beast then of the labyrinth?
And this your heart is?
Vittia. No, not ever: no.
But now, if you deny me.
Yolanda. Speak as a woman,
If there is Womanhood in you to speak.
The name of Berengere Lusignan must
Go clean unto the years, fair and unsullied.
Nor must the bloody leap
Of death fall on her from Lord Renier's sword,
A death too ready if he but suspect.
No, she is holy!
And holy are my lips
Remembering that they may call her mother!
All the bright world I breathe because of her,
Laughter and roses, day-song of the sea,
Not bitterness and loneliness and blight!
All the bright world,
Of voices, dear as waking to the dead—
Voices of love and tender earthly hopes—
O, all the beauty I was once forbid!
Yes, yes!—
She lifted me, a lonely convent weed,
A cloister thing unvisited of dew,
Withering and untended and afar
From the remembered ruin of my home,
And here has planted me in happiness.
Then, for her, all I am!
Vittia. Or—hope to be?
Yolanda. The price, say, of your silence.—I am weary.
Vittia. And would be rid of me.
Yolanda. The price, the price.
Vittia. It is (low and ashamed) that you renounce Amaury's love.
(A pause.)