Whose clue, dear Diego, was given into my hands,—the clue meaning freedom, but also eternal parting—by the most faithful, intrepid, magnanimous, the most loving——and the most beloved of women!
The DUKE has raised his arms from the parapet, and drawn himself erect, folding them on his breast, and seeking for DIEGO'S face in the darkness. But DIEGO, unseen by the DUKE, has clutched the parapet and sunk on to a bench.
DUKE
(walking up and down, slowly and meditatively, after a pause)
The poets have fabled many things concerning virtuous women. The Roman Arria, who stabbed herself to make honourable suicide easier for her husband; Antigone, who buried her brother at the risk of death; and the Thracian Alkestis, who descended into the kingdom of Death in place of Admetus. But none, to my mind, comes up to her. For fancy is but thin and simple, a web of few bright threads; whereas reality is closely knitted out of the numberless fibres of life, of pain and joy. For note it, Diego—those antique women whom we read of were daughters of kings, or of Romans more than kings; bred of a race of heroes, and trained, while still playing with dolls, to pride themselves on austere duty, and look upon the wounds and maimings of their soul as their brothers and husbands looked upon the mutilations of battle. Whereas here; here was a creature infinitely humble; a waif, a poor spurned toy of brutal mankind's pleasure; accustomed only to bear contumely, or to snatch, unthinking, what scanty happiness lay along her difficult and despised path,—a wild creature, who had never heard such words as duty or virtue; and yet whose acts first taught me what they truly meant.
DIEGO
(who has recovered himself, and is now leaning in his turn on the parapet)
Ah——a light woman, bought and sold many times over, my Lord; but who loved, at last.
DUKE
That is the shallow and contemptuous way in which men think, Diego,—and boys like thee pretend to; those to whom life is but a chess-board, a neatly painted surface alternate black and white, most suitable for skilful games, with a soul clean lost or gained at the end! I thought like that. But I grew to understand life as a solid world: rock, fertile earth, veins of pure metal, mere mud, all strangely mixed and overlaid; and eternal fire at the core! I learned it, knowing Magdalen.