RAFI
Ah, stand apart and veil your face, you who call in the name of reason!
You are all afire for martyrdom: can you hear reason calling from her snows?
Oh, you woman, Allah curse you for blinding my eyes with love!
PERVANEH
Ah, Rafi!
RAFI Be silent—be silent! Your voice is the voice of a garden at daybreak, when all the birds are singing at the sun. Forget your whirling dreams, your fires, your lightnings, your splendours of the soul, and answer the passionless voice that asks you—why should your lover die, and such a death?
PERVANEH
I am listening.
RAFI I am very young. Shall I forget to laugh if I continue to live? Shall I spend all my hours regretting you? Shall I not return to my country and comfort the hearts of those that gave me birth? Have I not my white-walled house, my books, my old friends, my garden of flowers and trees? Has the stream forgotten to sing at the end of my garden because Pervaneh comes no more?
"Love fades," saith Reason, with a gentler voice. "Love fades but doth not fall. Love fadeth not to yellow like the rose but to gold like the leaves upon the poplar by the stream." And when my poplars are all gold, I shall sit beneath their shade beside the stream to read my book. When I am tired of my book I will lie on my back and watch the clouds. There in the clouds I shall see your face, and remember you with a wistful remembrance as if you had always been a dream and the silver torment of your arms had never been more than the white mists circling the round mountain snows.
PERVANEH (With growing anger) And so, wrapped in pleasant fancies, you will forget the woman you have sold to a tyrant. And so, while I, far from my country and my home, am dying of shame and confinement, you will dream and you will dream!
RAFI The plague on your dishonour! You are to be the Caliph's wife. Is that not held for the highest honour to which a woman can attain? Is that worse shame than being flayed by a foul negro? The shame! the selling! the dishonour! A woman's vanity: am I to be tortured to death to gratify your pride? If I must not have you, do I care whose wife you are? I shall remember you as you are now— rock water undefiled.
PERVANEH
Cold and heartless coward; you are afraid of death!
RAFI By Allah, I am afraid of death, and the man who fears not death is a dullard and a fool! Are we still making speeches in full Divan to the admiration of the by-standers? Must we pose even now! If you hate me for fearing death, go your way and leave this coward. Ah, no, no, do not leave me, O Pervaneh! Forgive me that I am what I am. I have not unsaid my promise. I will die with you. I will die! I will endure the tortures that are thrice as terrible as death, the tortures that parch my mouth with fear.