of sailors chanting some sad
litany of the sea. URSUS leans back in his chair, looking up into
the face of departing night. GWYMPLANE paces in and out,
anguished with unrest._]

URSUS [_to GWYMPLANE, who hardly heeds him_]

Nothing follows us. It never occurred to them that a man should want
to escape good fortune. They never think to bolt the door when they
have gilded the walls. O, how profitably one can surprise these people
who think the entire world reflects their contemplation of self.

GWYMPLANE

[_Who has not heard the preceding speech at all, comes in,
halting abruptly._]

Life, life. It has suddenly burst its leash--torn in among us like a
mad dog and wounded us, mortally, I think, [_glances at DEA_] O, the
pain, the tragedy that can come out of nonsense. Will Dea live, can
Dea live?

URSUS [_sighing heavily_]

Perhaps, perhaps. How quiet and smiling she looks. There is some great
pathos about her peacefulness as if Heaven were restoring to her
something cruelly lost in this world.

GWYMPLANE

[_Walking over to her couch and wringing his hands._]

My love, my little love.

[_URSUS rising and soothing his agonized posture with a gentle
hand, which GWYMPLANE shakes off._]

GWYMPLANE

Oh, there seems no corner in myself into which I can creep, pull down
the blinds, and shut out those horrible, jeering, grotesque, indecent
processionals that I joined and made last night.

URSUS

My poor son! You threw your body to the jackals for an hour. You
forgot there was a soul in your body to get mangled along with the
rest.

GWYMPLANE

Oh, my soul was not in all that.

URSUS

Most people perish from thinking like you. [_earnestly_] Somewhere in
you is a blinding, transfigured face, struggling up out of the
sprawled, coiling limbs of infinite pasts, yet put it in certain
conditions and it retains its fearful stamp of former bestiality. But
during death, death the last condition we follow, what a likeness unto
God appears upon the features of the worst of us.

GWYMPLANE [_who is too tortured to hear_]

Oh, how can I ever again catch at her lovely virginal hands? [_he
lifts one very gently_] Her hands have the sudden beauty and strange
fragrance of flowers that bloom among shadows. How can I ever press
my lips against them again without bruising their dear shy softness by
this weight of unworthiness I carry within me?

URSUS

Only through hope.

GWY