,
he says, he is leaving on the morrow. She leans further out, telling him
that he may take her hand if he will promise not to leave on the next
day. Suddenly her long tresses fall over her head and stream about
Pelleas. He is enraptured. "I have never seen such hair as yours,
Melisande! See! see! Though it comes from so high, it floods me to the
heart!... And it is sweet, sweet as though it fell from heaven!... I can
no longer see the sky through your locks.... My two hands can no longer
hold them.... They are alive like birds in my hands. And they love me,
they love me more than you do!" Melisande begs to be released, Pelleas
kisses the enveloping tresses.... "Do you hear my kisses?--They mount
along your hair." Doves come from the tower--Melisande's doves--and fly
about them. They are frightened, and are flying away. "They will be
lost in the dark!" laments Melisande. Golaud enters by the winding
stair, and surprises them. Melisande is entrapped by her hair, which is
caught in the branches of a tree. "What are you doing here?" asks
Golaud. They are confused, and stammer inarticulately. "Melisande, do
not lean so far out of the window," cautions her husband. "Do you not
know how late it is? It is almost midnight. Do not play so in the
darkness. You are a pair of children!" He laughs nervously. "What
children!"

He and Pelleas go out, and the scene shifts to the vaults in the depths
under the castle,--dank, unwholesome depths, that exhale an odor of
death, where the darkness is "like poisoned slime." Golaud leads his
brother through the vaults, which Pelleas had seen only once, long ago.
"Here is the stagnant water of which I spoke; do you smell the
death-odor?--That is what I wanted you to perceive," insinuates Golaud.
"Let us go to the edge of this overhanging rock, and do you lean over a
little. You will feel it in your face.... Lean over; have no fear; ... I
will hold you ... give me ... no, no, not your hand, it might slip....
Your arm, your arm! Do you see down into the abyss, Pelleas?" "Yes, I
think I can see to the bottom of the abyss," rejoins Pelleas. "Is it the
light that trembles so?" He straightens up, turns, and looks at Golaud.
"Yes, it is the lantern," answers Melisande's husband, his voice
shaking. "See--I moved it to throw light on the walls." "I stifle
here.... Let us go!" exclaims Pelleas. They leave in silence.

The succeeding scene shows them on a terrace at the exit of the vaults.
Golaud warns