EMPEROR [Dreamily]
As once before, there in your garden on that never-to-be-forgotten morning. All about us, the wonderful flowers of distant lands were unfolding their petals, still moist with the early dews——and the beautiful Imperial Phoenix was brilliant in all her glory. [He seats himself on the throne near her, his head resting against the back.]
EMPRESS
To-day, the flames have swept away those flowers, and the Phoenix is in agony, her wings burned in the fire of war. But, on the threshold of the Great Beyond, she will confide to you her deepest secret. Now it is your turn to listen. [The EMPEROR raises his head and looks at her.] While you were uttering those noble and magnificent words of sacrifice——Oh! beneath my impassive mask, what a struggle was mine on to be deaf to their appeal! And I should have yielded, if the duty which you presented to me had been only a painful duty. But it would have been too easy and too sweet. For I loved you! [The EMPEROR arises.] And, living, I have no more the right to happiness, because it was I who lighted that great funeral pyre of men's lives in my palace.
EMPEROR [Interrupting, exultantly]
O my sovereign! O my beautiful, fading flower! To hear that from your lips at the moment when they are about to grow cold for ever! Oh! To be beloved by you, I could not believe it possible. And now no aid can come from men or gods.
EMPRESS
No aid? Do you think I would accept it? I have spoken only because I know I am going to die. Aid! But did I not tell you it was I who lighted the pyre, this hand which set to it the flaming torch. And as they threw themselves into the glowing furnace, dying for my son and for me, I cried out my solemn vow: Soon I come to the Land of the Shades, I come, I follow you. After that, if I were to live, to spend a happy life with you——I should loathe myself. [She remains seated, the EMPEROR kneels at her feet, resting his head on the cushions of the throne.] In entering your palace, I was afraid of myself, it was only myself that I feared——for at no time did I hate that strange impostor who appeared in my palace one day, never did I hate him even when I knew not, when I did not understand. And in the closed litter in which I was brought to Peking, at every stage of that mournful journey my fears and my anguish increased, according as the impression became stronger and stronger, until at last I was convinced that you were the Emperor! [Suddenly terrified, she starts up.] You have not deceived me? Tell me, it is indeed death which you have given me? Oh, no, you could not have done that. You are too noble to have led me into a trap——
EMPEROR
No, my sovereign, no, I have not deceived you. Death is close to you, it is in your heart, inevitable death.