hind fans._]

2D COURTIER

What an extraordinary evening! How calm the water is! It makes the
swans look exactly like topaz clouds reflecting in a titanic mirror.

A LADY

Yes. The sky is just as clear as the Queen's ear-rings of aquamarine.
A storm could hardly blow up out of such blueness, so the masque is
bound to be heavenly.

3D COURTIER [_approaching_]

I hate to interrupt your celestial jargon with human speech, but does
anybody know whether Phedro has been able to find the Prince and give
him the Queen's command?

LADY [_answering with frigid distinction_]

Probably not, but the Prince can never be found and is always
forgiven. It is much to be loved in secret by a----

1ST COURTIER [_laying finger on his lips_]

Hush!

2D COURTIER [_reprovingly_]

At court one must try not to think aloud or one is perhaps overheard
by--[_makes the motion of a blade across his throat_].

2D LADY

O nonsense! Why, Phedro confides in everybody, and so nobody ever
believes him. Yet he is always quite right.

2D COURTIER

He puts his nose into the dust that is swept out of great corners.
Indeed he looks in unthinkable places, and finds the incredible.

1ST COURTIER

Do you know what he told me lately?

LADY

I am ailing with curiosity.

1ST COURTIER

It was a fantastic tale about one of our own lot. Indeed about one
wearing strawberry leaves and with two very young sons growing up, and
she, apparently imagining the younger to be the living likeness,
growing plainer every day, of a former indiscretion, gives directions
to her favourite lackey to get rid of this wrong one and he, from
spleen, gives the honest child away. The lady dies shortly after; the
father never suspects anything. The bastard inherits, so the entire
tragedy was in vain.

3D COURTIER

Fear is always absurd. You should be quite sure you are found out
first; even then you have only to look rather sharply at anyone you
fear in order to reduce _Him_. Indeed, the best of defences is
presumption upon the brotherhood of sin.

A LADY

O how true!

PHEDRO

[_A person of shifty, wizened visage enters. In a jocular tone._]

What is "O how true?" [_He glances about him._] You are all looking
very _en rapport_ with the Almighty. In fact as if He had been telling
you secrets. Did they concern me? I am always a prey to the desire of
hearing what is said--just before and just after I am in a room.

1ST COURTIER

[_With much