But from this point he proceeds alone. Her help is no longer needed, and even if it were not so, she has none now to give. “Naught’s had, all’s spent.” Her dream is shattered; the vision of glory is fled away into the night, and she who had felt “the future in the instant” can only brood over the wreck of the past. The crown for which she had struggled presses like molten lead into her brain; the lamp which has lighted her so far only flings its rays backward on the blood-stained pathway she has trodden; and, bitterest of all to her woman’s soul, the evil she had wrought for his sake now breaks their lives asunder and parts them for ever. For his spirit has no access to the anguish of remorse that is fast hurrying her to the tomb, and she on her side can take no part in those darker projects with which he seeks to buttress the tottering fabric of his ambition. In all tragedy there is nothing so pitiful in its pathos as the passage in which she strives to grant to her husband the support of which she herself stands so sorely in need. She feels instinctively that he shuns her company, and surmises that he too is suffering the lonely pangs of remorse, little guessing that he comes to her fresh from a new scheme of murder:
How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy,
Should be without regard: what’s done, is done.
With what a jarring note comes his answer:
We have scotched the snake, not killed it.
And yet, despite this answer, with its clear indication of the true drift of his thoughts, she still fails to realise the gulf that divides them. All through the banquet scene she cannot rid herself of the belief that he is haunted, as she is haunted, by the vision of the murdered king, and even when he strips off the mask and bares the inner workings of his breast—
For mine own good,