Part 10 (1/2)

QUEEN (_meditatively_): I must not love, Oozizi.

OOZIZI: Lady! The common people love.

[_She points to door._

Lady, the green fields going from here to the blueness, and bending towards it, and going wandering on, and the rivers they meet and the woods that shade the rivers, all own you for their sovereign. Lady, a million lime-trees mellow your realm. The golden h.o.a.rds are yours. Yours are the deep fields and the iris marshes. Yours are the roads of wandering and all ways home. The common delights of love your mere soldiers know. Lady, you may not love.

[_The_ QUEEN _sighs._ OOZIZI _continues her knitting._

QUEEN: My mother loved, Oozizi.

OOZIZI: Lady, for a day. For one day, mighty lady, As one might stoop in idleness to a broken toy and pick it up and throw it again away, so she loved for a day. That idle fancy of an afternoon tarnished no pinnacle that shone from her exalted station. But to love for more than a day--(QUEEN'S _face lights up_)--that were to place your high unequalled glory below a vulgar pastime. One alone may sit in the golden palace to reign over the green fields; but all may love.

QUEEN: Do all love but I, Oozizi?

OOZIZI: Wondrous many, lady.

QUEEN: How know you, Oozizi?

OOZIZI: The common shouts that come up at evening, the clamour of the lanes; they are but from love.

QUEEN: What is love, Oozizi?

OOZIZI: Love is a foolish thing.

QUEEN: How know you, Oozizi?

OOZIZI: They came t.i.ttering to me once; but I saw the foolishness of it.

QUEEN (_a little sadly_): And they came no more?

OOZIZI (_a little sadly too_): No more.

[_Both look thoughtfully out into dreams, the_ QUEEN _on her throne, chin on hand._

[_Suddenly a stir is heard from the Hall of the Hundred Princes._

QUEEN (_alarmed_): Hark! What was that?

OOZIZI (_rises, listening anxiously_): It sounded ... to come from the Hall ... of the Hundred Princes.

QUEEN: They were never heard here before.

OOZIZI: Lady, never.

QUEEN (_anxiously_): What can it mean?

OOZIZI: I know not, lady.

QUEEN: Sound never troubled our inner chamber before.