[Joyzelle lies sleeping on a grassy bank, before a box hedge, cut into arches, in which lilies are flowering. It is night. A fountain ripples gently. The moon is shining. Enter Arielle.
Arielle.
She sleeps.... The breaths of the garden are hushed around her to listen to her breath; and the nightingale alone, deputed by the night which bathes her in silver, comes to soothe her slumbers.... How beautiful and peaceful she is; and how pure she looks, a thousand times purer than the water that trickles yonder, flowing from the glaciers, in the snowy whiteness that sings under the pale leaves!... Her sweet hair lies spread like a flood of motionless light; and the moon cannot tell to whom belongs the gold that mingles with the azure in which its beams float.... Her bright eyes are closed; and yet the light that falls from the stars tremulously raises her loving eyelids to seek beneath them the last memory of the fair day that is past.... Her mouth is a moist, breathing flower; and the lilies have poured dewdrops on her bare shoulder, to give her her share of the pearls which night distributes in silence, in the name of the heavens that open over the treasure of the worlds.... Ah, Joyzelle, Joyzelle! I am but a phantom lost in the night, more lost than you, for all my clear-sightedness, and nearer the tomb where happiness expires.... I am not my own mistress; I obey my master, I can give nothing but an invisible kiss, which cannot wake you and is not even mine.... But I love you, I love you, as a less happy sister loves her whom love has chosen first.... I love you, I encompass you with all the powers that are not named in the prayers of men; and I would that my master had met you earlier, before fate, which hurries forward that incomparable hour, had fixed the tearful future that awaits him and awaits me with him.... I spread my powerless, troubled affection over your calm sleep.... Here is the only kiss that I can give you.... Ah, why does not he of whom I am but the unconscious and docile shadow come himself to lay it on your lips, which call to mine even as all that is beautiful calls to mystery!...
[She kisses Joyzelle on the forehead.
Joyzelle.
(In her sleep.) Lancéor!...
Arielle.
One more.... The last, even as we drink of the well defended by the angels who keep the secrets of time and space, the well at whose brink we shall never rest again....
Joyzelle.
(Sleeping, talking as in a dream.) Is that you, Lancéor?... How sweet your lips are at the breath of dawn!... I swoon beneath the flowers that fall from paradise....