assionate abandonment. "Do you say that?" exclaims her lover. "See, it
is no longer we who will it so! Come, come!" They embrace. "Listen! my
heart is almost strangling me! Ah! how beautiful it is in the shadows!"
"There is some one behind us!" whispers Melisande. Pelleas has heard
nothing. "I hear only your heart in the darkness." "I heard the
crackling of dead leaves," insists Melisande. "A-a-h! he is behind a
tree!" she whispers. "Who?" "Golaud!--he has his sword!" "And I have
none!" cries Pelleas. "He does not know we have seen him," he cautions.
"Do not stir; do not turn your head.--He will remain there so long as he
thinks we do not know he is watching us.--He is still motionless.--Go,
go at once this way. I will wait for him--I will hold him back." "No,
no, no!" cries Melisande.

"Go! go! he has seen everything!--He will kill us!"

"All the better! all the better!"

"He is coming!--Your mouth! your mouth!"

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"

They kiss desperately.

"Oh, oh! All the stars are falling!" cries Pelleas.

"Upon me also!"

"Again! Again!--Give! give!"

"All! all! all!"

Golaud rushes upon them with drawn sword and kills Pelleas, who falls
beside the fountain. Melisande flees in terror, crying out as she goes,
"Oh! oh! I have no courage! I have no courage!"

Golaud pursues her in silence through the forest.

ACT V

The last act opens in an apartment in the castle. Melisande is stretched
unconscious upon a bed. Golaud, Arkel, and the physician stand in a
corner of the room. Some days earlier Melisande and her husband had
been found stretched out senseless before the castle gate, Golaud having
still in his side the sword with which he had sought to kill himself.
Melisande had been wounded,--"a tiny little wound that would not kill a
pigeon;" yet her life is despaired of; and on her death-bed she has been
delivered of a child--"a puny little girl such as a beggar might be
ashamed to own--a little waxen thing that came before its time, that can
be kept alive only by being wrapped in wool." The room is very silent.
"It seems to me that we keep too still in her room," says Arkel; "it is
not a good sign; look how she sleeps--how slowly.--It is as if her soul
were forever chilled." Golaud laments that he has killed her without
cause. "They had kissed like little children--and I--I did it in spite
of myself!" Melisande wakes. She wishes to have the window open, that
she may see the sunset. She has never felt b