Laodice, slowly.
I have not need of rinds and lees to-night;
Come, take these out and burn them.
The Woman. Ay, come.
Laodice, starting up.
Mysta, Mysta, my joy! What have you there?
The thing a mother called Antiochus?
To Rhodogune.
Do you not know your fellow and my hand?
Rhodogune retires.
Mysta.
I was the handmaid of a displaced queen;
I am dry nurse to the undoubted queen,
Come back merely to boast and make display
How lusty a baby grows in careful hands,
How noble I to carry a living king.
Laodice, leaping to her.
Unwind, dishevel, give it up to me.
Clapping her hands.
Let there be lights above: I must see closely.
If I embrace you I shall touch it too.
A woman hangs a lamp from long chains over the gallery on the left, then withdraws. After a moment she passes along the colonnade from left to right and disappears. A moment later she leans from the latticed windows on the right to light two lamps suspended from the roof to a point immediately below her. The lights are such that, when the twilight has gone, the figures of the persons are more definite than their features, and the upper part of the chamber is almost unlit. In the meantime Mysta has continued.
Mysta.
Nay, we are but harbour-drift from Antioch:
Come, take us out and burn us.
Laodice. Aha, Mysta.
Mysta.
Touch not my hair; 'tis foul from many ships.
Laodice.
I have ached by watching ships that were not yours.
Were you in Sophron's vessel? Did he know?
Mysta.
She did not trust me soon to tend her child,
Returning oft like the uneasy cat:
When I had slipt these rags on it and me
I herded with night-women by the shore.
Ere there, I passed a rift in palaces,
Moment of empty street and Berenice
Marching with hunger in her bright fixed eyes,
Champing her golden chain—one hand on it
Tugged her mouth downward—one hand smote a spear
Upon the stones as she stepped on and on
Toward the house of Cæneus your known friend.
They spied the harbour; I must leave by land;
Then was some tale of fishers, trading sloops:
Sophron knows not the thief like a fierce mother
Whose hard feet last left ship at Ephesus—
Where Ptolemy is looked for eagerly.
As she speaks Laodice has drawn a scarf from her shoulders, twisted it and strained it in her hands; it tears and she throws it down.
Mysta holds out the child to her.
'Twas warm and quiet so long. Let it live.
Laodice, taking the child and scanning it.
Let me read here:
This is the mould, wrongly retouched and spent—
It is his child and yet I have not known it....