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Page 109
STRANGER. Only my thoughts.
LADY. Your good, your beautiful thoughts. ...
STRANGER. Given me by you.
LADY. Had I anything to give you?
STRANGER. You? Everything! But up to now my hands have not been
free to take it. Not clean enough to stroke your little heart. ...
LADY. Beloved! The time for reconciliation's coming.
STRANGER. With mankind, and woman--through a woman? Yes, that time
has come; and blessed may you be amongst women.
(The candles and lamps go out; it grows dark in the dining-room;
but a weak ray of light can be seen, coming from the brass standard
lamp in the LADY's room.)
LADY. Why's it grown dark? Oh!
STRANGER. Where are you, beloved? Give me your hand. I'm afraid!
LADY. Here, dearest.
STRANGER. The little hand, held out to me in the darkness, that's
led me over stones and thorns. That little, soft, dear hand! Lead
me into the light, into your bright, warm room; fresh green like
hope.
LADY (leading him towards the pale-green room). Are you afraid?
STRANGER. You're a white dove, with whom the startled eagle finds
sanctuary, when heaven's thunder clouds grow black, for the dove
has no fear. She has not provoked the thunders of heaven!
(They have reached the doorway leading to the other room, when the
curtain falls.)
***
[The same room; but the table has been cleared. The LADY is sitting
at it, doing nothing. She seems bored. On the right, down stage, a
window is open. It is still. The STRANGER comes in, with a piece of
paper in his hand.]
STRANGER. Now you shall hear it.
LADY (acquiescing absent-mindedly). Finished already?
STRANGER. Already? Do you mean that seriously? I've taken seven
days to write this little poem. (Silence.) Perhaps it'll bore you
to hear it?
LADY (drily). No. Certainly not. (The STRANGER sits down at the
table and looks at the LADY.) Why are you looking at me?
STRANGER. I'd like to see your thoughts.
LADY. But you've heard them.
STRANGER. That's nothing; I want to see them! (Pause.) What one
says is mostly worthless. (Pause.) May I read them? No, I see I
mayn't. You want nothing more from me. (The LADY makes a gesture as
if she were going to speak.) Your face tells me enough. Now you've
sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To
that I answer: how, my beloved? Have _I_ killed your ego, when I
wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream
off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life,
with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge and art?
LADY. I don't deny it, but my ego wasn't my own.
STRANGER. Not yours? Then what is? Something that belongs to
others?
LADY. Is yours something that belongs to others too?
STRANGER. No. What I've experienced is my own, mine and no other's.
What I've read becomes mine, because I've broken it in two like
glass, melted it down, and from this substance blown new glass in
novel forms.
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