Mieris. Why did you not speak of it?
Yaouma. I feared they would not believe me.
Mieris. Oh, Yaouma, how I envy you! If you but knew the ill they have done me. They have half killed me, killing all the legends and all the memories that were mine. They made me blush at my simplicity. I felt shamed to have been so easily fooled by such gross make-believes. And now, what have I gained by this revelation? My soul is a house after the burning, black, ruined, empty. Nothing is left but ruins, ruins one might laugh at. [In tears] I am parched with thirst, I hunger, I tremble with cold. They have made my soul blind, too. I cry out for help, for consolation. Oh! for a lie, some other lie, to replace the one they have taken away from me!
Yaouma. Why ask a lie? Why not forget what they have said. Why not recall what you learned at your mother's knee—Why not, yourself, set up in your heart again, those images which they threw down—
Mieris. Yes! Yes! I will do it. They have awakened my reason, and killed my faith. I shall kill my reason, to revive our gods. Though I no longer believe, I shall do the actions of believers—and, if my god be false, I shall believe so firmly in him that I shall make him true!—Yes, the lowest, the most senseless superstitions, I venerate them, I exalt—I glory in them! The ugliest, the most deformed, the most unreal of our gods, I adore them, and I bow down before their impossibility. [She kneels] Oh, I stifle in their petty narrow world, sad as a forest without birds! Air! Air! Singing! The sound of wings! Things that fly!
Yaouma [kneeling] Let me be sacrificed!
Mieris. Let me have a reason for living!
Yaouma. I would give my life to the gods who gave me birth!
Mieris. I would believe that there is some one above men!
Yaouma. Some one who watches over us!