Call not this little: terrible in weakness
Is everything that grows on shifting sands
Of doubt. But here is perfect certainty.

MERCHANT.
And how of him?

SOBEIDE.
That too must not distress thee.
'Twere hard to judge, had I concealed it from thee;
I have revealed it now, so let it rest.

MERCHANT.
Thou art not free of him!

SOBEIDE.
So thinkest thou?
When is one "free?" Things have no hold on us,
Except we have in us the will to hold them.
All that is past. [Gesture.]

MERCHANT (after a pause).
His love was like to thine?
[SOBEIDE nods.]
But then, why then, how has it come to pass
That he was not the one--

SOBEIDE
Why, we were poor!
No, more than poor, thou knowst. His father, too.
Poor too. Besides, a gloomy man, as hard
As mine was all too soft, and on him weighing
As mine on me. The whole much easier
To live through than to put in words. For years
It lasted. We were children when it started,
Ere long as tired as foals, too early harnessed
For drawing heavy wagons in the harvest.

MERCHANT.
But let me tell thee, this cannot be true
About his father. I know old Shalnassar,
The carpet-dealer. Well, he is a graybeard,
And he who will may speak good of his name,
But I will not. A wicked, bad old man!

SOBEIDE.
May be, all one. To him it is his father.
I ne'er have seen him. Ganem sees him so.
He calls him sick, is saddened when he speaks
Of him. And therefore I have never seen him,
That is, not since my childhood, when I saw
Him now and then upon the window leaning.

MERCHANT.
But he's not poor, no, anything but poor!

SOBEIDE (sure of her facts, sadly smiling).
Thinkst thou I should be here?

MERCHANT.
And he?

SOBEIDE.
What, he?

MERCHANT.
He clearly made thee feel
He thought impossible, what he and thou
Had wished for years and long held possible?

SOBEIDE. Why, for it was impossible? ... and then