l be near you.

(MARY faints.) (The FIRST MERCHANT takes up the carPet, spreads
it before the fire and stands in front of it warming his hands.)

FIRST MERCHANT. Our faces go unscratched,
For she has fainted. Wring the neck o' that fowl,
Scatter the flour and search the shelves for bread.
We'll turn the fowl upon the spit and roast it,
And eat the supper we were bidden to,
Now that the house is quiet, praise our master,
And stretch and warm our heels among the ashes.

END OF SCENE 1

SCENE 2

FRONT SCENE.--A wood with perhaps distant view of turreted house
at one side, but all in flat colour, without light and shade and
against a diafiered or gold background.

COUNTESS CATHLEEN comes in leaning Upon ALEEL's arm. OONA follows
them.

CATHLEEN. (Stopping) Surely this leafy corner, where one smells
The wild bee's honey, has a story too?

OONA. There is the house at last.

ALEEL. A man, they say,
Loved Maeve the Queen of all the invisible host,
And died of his love nine centuries ago.
And now, when the moon's riding at the full,
She leaves her dancers lonely and lies there
Upon that level place, and for three days
Stretches and sighs and wets her long pale cheeks.

CATHLEEN. So she loves truly.

ALEEL. No, but wets her cheeks,
Lady, because she has forgot his name.

CATHLEEN. She'd sleep that trouble away--though it must be
A heavy trouble to forget his name--
If she had better sense.

OONA. Your own house, lady.

ALEEL. She sleeps high up on wintry Knock-na-rea
In an old cairn of stones; while her poor women
Must lie and jog in the wave if they would sleep
Being water born--yet if she cry their names
They run up on the land and dance in the moon
Till they are giddy and would love as men do,
And be as patient and as pitiful.
But there is nothing that will stop in their heads,
They've such poor memories, though they weep for it.
Oh, yes, they weep; that's when the moon is full.

CATHLEEN. is it because they have short memories
They live so long?

ALEEL. What's memory but the ash
That chokes our fires that have begun to sink?
And they've a dizzy, everlasting fire.

OONA. There is your own house, lady.

CATHLEEN. Why, that's true,
And we'd have passed it without noticing.

ALEEL. A curse upon it for a meddlesome house!
Had it but stayed away I would have known
What Queen Maeve thinks on when the moon is pinched;
And whether now--as in the old days--the dancers
Set