Aur. Your strange proceeding does my wonder move;
Yet seems not to express a brother's love.
Say, to what cause my rescued life I owe.
Mor. If what you ask would please, you should not know.
But since that knowledge, more than death, will grieve,
Know, Indamora gained you this reprieve.
Aur. And whence had she the power to work your change?
Mor. The power of beauty is not new or strange.
Should she command me more, I could obey;
But her request was bounded with a day.
Take that; and, if you spare my farther crime,
Be kind, and grieve to death against your time.
Enter Arimant.
Remove this prisoner to some safer place:
He has, for Indamora's sake, found grace;
And from my mother's rage must guarded be,
Till you receive a new command from me.
Arim. Thus love, and fortune, persecute me still,
And make me slave to every rival's will.[Aside.
Aur. How I disdain a life, which I must buy
With your contempt, and her inconstancy!
For a few hours my whole content I pay:
You shall not force on me another day.[Exit with Ari.
Enter Melesinda.
Mel. I have been seeking you this hour's long space,
And feared to find you in another place;
But since you're here, my jealousy grows less:
You will be kind to my unworthiness.
What shall I say? I love to that degree,
Each glance another way is robbed from me.
Absence, and prisons, I could bear again;
But sink, and die, beneath your least disdain.