LDA

You are all-powerful here, John, you can do
what you please, if you wish to. You don't
love me at all.

JOHN

Miralda, you know I love you. Didn't
I kill Hussein for you?

MIRALDA

Yes, but you don't love me now.

JOHN

And Hussein's people killed ARCHIE. That
was for you too. I brought my brother out
here to help you. He was engaged to be
married, too.

MIRALDA

But you don't love me now.

JOHN

Yes, I do. I love you as the dawn loves
the iris marshes. You know the song they
sing. (footnote: poem just before Act III)

MIRALDA

Then why won't you marry me?

JOHN

I told you, I told you. I had a dream about
the future. I forgot the dream, but I know
I was not to marry. I will not wrong the
future.

MIRALDA

Don't be crazy.

JOHN

I will have what fancies I please, crazy or
sane. Am I not Shereef of Shaldomir? Who
dare stop me if I would be mad as Herod?

MIRALDA

I will be crowned queen.

JOHN

It is not my wish.

MIRALDA

I will, I will, I will.

JOHN

Drive me not to anger. If I have you cast
into a well and take twenty of the fairest
daughters of Al Shaldomir in your place, who
can gainsay me?

MIRALDA

I will be crowned queen.

JOHN

O, do not be tiresome.

MIRALDA

Was it not my money that brought you
here? Was it not I who said "Kill Hussein"?
What power could you have had, had
Hussein lived? What would you have been doing
now, but for me?

JOHN

I don't know, Miralda.

MIRALDA

Catching some silly train to the City.
Working for some dull firm. Living in some
small suburban house. It is I, I, that brought
you from all that, and you won't make me a
queen.

JOHN

Is it not enough that you are my beloved?
You know there is none other but you. Is
it not enough, Miralda?

MIRALDA

It is not enough. I will be queen.

JOHN

Tchah!... Miralda, I know you are a
wonderful woman, the most wonderful in the
East; how you ever came to be in the West
I don't know, and a train of all places; but,
Miralda, you must not have petty whims,
they don't become you.

MIRALDA

Is it a petty whim to wish to be a queen?

JOHN

Yes, when it is only the name you want.
You are a queen. You have all you wish for.
Are you not my beloved? And have I not
power here over all men? Could I not close
the pass?

MIRALDA

I want to be queen.

JOHN

Oh-h! I will leave you. I have more to do
than to sit and hear your whims. When I
come back you will h