he has taken from me the girl I would
have wed. [_Satni pushes him away. Sokiti, weeping, clings to his
garments_] Grant it, I implore you--I implore you!--My life is gone with
her--make him die, I pray you.

SATNI. Leave me!

SOKITI. Hear me.

BITIOU [_coming between them and striking Sokiti_] Begone! Begone! He
would not hear you! [_Sokiti goes out_] Listen--listen--you see I made
him go. All--all whom you will, I shall beat them for you. Listen--if
you could make me tall like you, and steady on my legs--See--here--I
have hidden away, safe, three gold rings, that I stole a while since; I
will give them you.

SATNI. Go, take them to the high priest--

BITIOU [_pitiably_] I have given four to him already.

_Sokiti and Nourm are conferring together. Enter Rheou.
They run away, Bitiou follows, falling and picking himself
up._

RHEOU. What do they want of you?

SATNI. They came here, following me. They believe me gifted with
supernatural power, and crave miracles of me, as though I were a God, or
a juggler. I am neither, and I work no miracles.

RHEOU. None the less you have worked two miracles.

SATNI. Not one.

RHEOU. And you will work yet one more.

SATNI. Never. I came hither not to perform miracles, but to prevent
them.

RHEOU. You will heal Mieris.

SATNI. No one can heal her, nor I, nor any other.

RHEOU. Give her a little hope.

SATNI. How can I?

RHEOU. Tell her you will invoke your God, and that some day perhaps--

SATNI. I have no God. If there be a god, he is so great, so far from as,
so utterly beyond our comprehension, that for us it is as though he did
not exist. To believe that one of our actions, to believe that a prayer
could act upon the will of God, is to belittle him, to deny him. He is
himself incapable of a miracle; it would be to belie himself. Could he
improve his work, he would not then have created it perfect from the
first. He could not do it.

RHEOU. Our ancient gods at least permitted hope.

SATNI. Keep them.

RHEOU. In the heart of Mieris, you have destroyed them.

SATNI. Do you regret it?

RHEOU. Not yet.

SATNI. What would you say?

RHEOU. Even if it be true that sight will never be given her, do not
tell her so. Far better promise that she will be healed.

SATNI. And to all the others, must I promise healing too? Because in a
house I relieved a child, whose illness sprang from a cause I could
remove; because a woman, ill in imagination, d