Miss Fitton:
[Shrugs her shoulders.] You make it hard for me to come again.
Shakespeare:
[Goes and kneels at her feet as she is sitting, and puts his hands on her waist.] Why don’t you try to cure me another way? Why not come and give yourself to me, till, surfeited with sweet, the appetite may die? That is the cure of love. Cure me like that!
Miss Fitton:
It might take long. But I like you better as you are now.
Shakespeare:
Do you! Ah! [Putting his head back.] If you knew the maddening hours I spend, longing, waiting, hoping, fearing, you would pity me. There is a martyrdom in love. I live in purgatory; burning now with hell’s fevers, and now my fiend comes and my dungeon, flame-lit, is more lovely-fair than Heaven. When you have gone the air will sing of you; I close my eyes and hear the rustle of your garments, and [putting his hands to his face] on my hands there lingers the perfume of your beauty. [He buries his face in her dress, then rises gravely.] You once said love would keep love; I love you, Mary, to madness.
Miss Fitton:
[Rises, too.] I am fond of you, too; do not doubt it.