2nd Woman. Bought by him, I: for he had heard of me.
Vashti.
I also, sold or bought; nay, rather paid:
Paid like cash to him, that as servant king
My father might have life, and a throne in life.
It mattered nothing then. [The QUEEN pauses.
Often in early summer, as I walkt
A girl singing her happiness, beside
The high green corn, holding all earth my own,
I saw, as my feet and my voice past by,
How in its hiding some croucht little beast
Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn
With plunging quivering fear. And always then
My heart answer'd the fear that shook the corn,
With a sudden doubt in its beating; for I knew
Within my life such rousing of dismay
I myself should watch, with seizing wonder.
It was so: in the midst of my new love,
That promist such a plenty in my soul,
At last some sleeping terror leapt awake,
And made the young growth shiver and wry about
Inwardly tormented. Yea, and my heart
It was, my heart in its hiding of green love,
That took so wildly the approaching sound
Of something strangely fearful walking near.
3rd Woman. A queer tale, this.
1st Woman.
A spectre visited you?
Vashti. Indeed, a spectre.
1st Woman.
That have I never seen.
Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp
To an eagle's bill, and claws upon its fingers,
The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue?
Vashti. The spectre was—my beauty.
3rd Woman.
It is as I said.
O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning;
And let him leech thy spirit.
4th Woman.
I've heard, the best
Riddance for evil notions in the mind,
Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue;
While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells
Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg'd deep
Into the soul; so that it passeth down,
Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad,—
3rd Woman. Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it,—