arcellus, summoning him to his bedside,
and that he may perhaps go away on the morrow. "Oh! why do you go away?"
says Melisande.

ACT II

The second act begins at an old and abandoned fountain in the park--the
"Fountain of the Blind," so called because it once possessed miraculous
healing powers. Pelleas and Melisande enter together. It is a stifling
day, and they seek the cool tranquillity of the fountain and the shadow
of the overarching trees--"One can hear the water sleep," says Pelleas.
Their talk is dangerously intimate. Melisande dips her hand in the cool
water, and plays with her wedding-ring as she lies stretched along the
edge of the marble basin. She throws the ring in the air and it falls
into the deep water. Melisande displays agitation: "What shall we say if
Golaud asks where it is?" "The truth, the truth," replies Pelleas.

The scene changes to an apartment in the castle. Golaud lies upon a bed,
with Melisande bending over him. He has been wounded while hunting.
Melisande is compassionate, perhaps remorseful. She too, she confesses,
is ill, unhappy, though she will not tell Golaud what it is that ails
her. Her husband discovers the absence of her wedding-ring, and harshly,
suspiciously, asks where it is. Melisande, confused and terrified,
dissembles, and answers that she must have lost it in a grotto by the
seashore, when she went there in the morning to pick shells for little
Yniold. She is sure it is there. Golaud bids her go at once and search
for it. She fears to go alone, and he suggests that she ask Pelleas to
accompany her.

The next scene discovers Melisande with Pelleas in the grotto. They are
deeply agitated. It is very dark, but Pelleas describes to her the look
of the place, for, he tells her, she must be able to answer Golaud if he
should question her. The moon breaks through the clouds and illumines
brightly the interior, revealing three old and white-haired beggars
asleep against a ledge of rock. Melisande is uneasy, and would go. They
depart in silence.

ACT III

The opening scene of the third act shows the exterior of one of the
towers of the castle, with a winding staircase passing beneath a window
at which sits Melisande, combing her unbound hair, and singing in the
starlit darkness--"like a beautiful strange bird," says Pelleas, who
enters by the winding stair. He entreats her to lean further forward out
of the window, that he may come closer, that he may touch her hand; for