Lady S. You change the figure:
The very rhapsody of Warwick Groom!
Sir T. Plastic as molten metal! Living hate
Mine is, a deeply struck deliberate cancer
In the heart, and half as old as I: half
Of my life it is: I know it now mature
That knew it not a-growing: wholesome hate!
A wholesome cancer, a resourceful pain,
A fount of passion!
Lady S. You forget yourself;
For now you stare and pant like some insane
Unhappy woman, sick with jealousy,
Her strangled voice and prayer, "Oh, just to crush
"My rival like a flea!"
Sir T. So would I do!
Lady S. I cannot understand you.
Sir T. I understand.
We know each other, Warwick Groom and I.
No legendary friendship ever wove
The lives of men in such a gallant web
As ours displayed: the secrets of our hearts
Were interchanged like goodly gifts that made
The giver and receiver ache with joy:
Our thoughts, our deeds, our sins were known and loved
Of either; nothing irksome, trivial, dull
Could happen day or night to him or me
Since telling of it gave it import, grave
Or humorous, subtle, sweet, or sad. Too well,
Too infinitely well we knew each other!
Grudge, longing, foible, vanity, conceit,
Ambition, terror, cowardice, fancy, whim
Revealed themselves in either's consciousness
Beyond the scope and verge of comely minds,
That there might still be something to confide,
Some proof of new affection: once, at least,
Two men should know each other inside out!
To cut and carve a specimen, a corpse,
A limbless, headless trunk, malodorous, foul,
O'er-hacked, o'er-handled by anatomists,
Tyros and demonstrators, makes a job
Cleaner than knowing truly inside out
The heart of man, the actual heart of man,
Not in a general mass of studies culled
From books, but in particular, one's friend.
Had fortune not divided us I know
Both had gone mad. He hates the thought of me,
As I the thought of him—the natural end
Of every intimacy pushed outside
The limit. Souls are clad and should be seen
In vestments only: things and thoughts there are
We must not think: forbidden is the tree
Of knowledge still to those that love themselves,
Their friends, their art, their people and the world.
This is a righteous hate in him and me.
Lady S. It desolates my heart to think it true!
What shall I say to him?
Sir T. Give him some food,
Some drink, some money.
Lady S. But he comes with news!
Oh, I forgot; you moved me so! Your Troilus,
It seems, is ill.
Sir T. Ah; so. He looked consumptive.
The understudy is letter-perfect.