Mas. The first star bring you! [Exit]
Cha. [Reads letter] When you see the princess Hernda, kiss for me the hand that gave me freedom. It was she unlocked my dungeon and nursed my bones to life. What I am is hers, and therefore yours. Le Val.
Hast grown so spent, O Fortune, that one stroke
Must deal both death and life?—with hand that parts
The night, show too my rainbow loss?.... All, all
My future sold to the gray usurer Grief,
Who gathers up as sapped and withered leaves
Time's unimagined buds! No eve, no dawn
With Hernda! No brief night that makes
The sun unwelcome as he golds desire,
The warm mist-flower where we lie its heart!
Unbrace thee here, my courage! Valiancy,
First god and last in man, unbuckle here!
... How meet Famette? Smile on her smiles? Deceive
Her love? She'll lay her head upon my heart
And hear it crying "Hernda!".... Hernda lost!
I must not dream here open to the risk
Of her unanswered eyes. Their lure would make
Dishonor, that on wreck feeds rampant, spring
Unshamed in me. I would forsake Famette.
[Goes right, upper path. Hernda comes from house and crosses rapidly to him]
Her. Chartrien! Come! [He turns slowly and meets her]
You take my hand, here where
You wished me dead?
Cha. That you have offered it
Proves me forgiven.
Her. You forgiven? Ah,
Has my atonement swollen above my fault
Till I may nod a pardon where I thought
To kneel for one?
Cha. LeVal has written me. [Kisses her hand]
This kiss is his salute, and that 'tis his,
Not mine, makes my lips bold to leave it here.
Her. Forgiven! Dawn is on my sky, that hung
Unutterably black! Yes, it is true
I saved LeVal. From Fate's own arms I snatched
My treachery's sequence, though his meantime pain
Is ever writ against me. Yet I too
Knew misery that might be mate of his.
And for that other wrong—here where we stand——
Cha. My wrong to you! Nay, don't forgive me that.
Leave me a wound to keep me ever paying
The debt of pain that solely eases guilt.