WINGED PRINCE [To THE CHILD]

Your Majesty must no longer keep about your neck like a relic a present given you by an impostor.

THE CHILD [Excitedly]

But I will keep it. I thought of my dead father when I saw that man, and when he told me that he would like to have me for a son, he was keeping back his tears.

EMPRESS

The instinct of children does not mislead them——nor can I believe, either, that the unknown visitor meant us harm——Let us wait awhile before we begin to hate him.

[She stretches out her hand and takes the poem which she places next to her heart.]


SCENE XIV

The same. THE WOMEN, and ARROW-BEARER