The Lady.
Quite calm, again? That’s well.
Wilt taste a peach? My basket holds a store
Of luscious peaches. Ah! she weaves a spell,
This lovely sorceress of fruit; what more
Can man ask from the earth? There is no cost
Too great for peaches. I have felt surprise
Through all my life that fair Eve should have lost
That mythic Asian land of Paradise
For a poor plebeian apple! Now a peach,
Pulpy, pink-veined, hanging within her reach,
Might well have tempted her.
Oh, these long hours!—
Whence comes this faint perfume of hot-house flowers—
Tea-roses?
The Maiden.
Tangled in your loosened hair
Are roses.
The Lady (thinking).
Nita must have twined them there—
The opera—I know now; I have sped
So swift across the country, my poor head
Is turned.—The opera? Yes; then—O heart,
How hast thou bled! [Dashes away tears.]
(Speaks.) Sweet child, I pray you tell
Again your budding romance, all the part
Where he first spoke. You’d known him long and well,
Your Willie?
The Maiden.
Yes; in childhood we had been
Two little lovers o’er the alphabet;
Then one day—I had grown to just sixteen—
Down in the apple-orchard—there—we met,
By chance—and—
The Lady (thinking).