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Act IV, Scene viii | ROXANE (running up to Christian): |  Ah, Christian, at last!. . . |
| CHRISTIAN (taking her hands): | | Now tell me why— | | Why, by these fearful paths so perilous— | | Across these ranks of ribald soldiery, | | You have come? |
| ROXANE: | | Love, your letters brought me here! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | What say you? |
| ROXANE: | | 'Tis your fault if I ran risks! | | Your letters turned my head! Ah! all this month, | | How many!—and the last one ever bettered | | The one that went before! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | What!—for a few | | Inconsequent love-letters! |
| ROXANE: | | Hold your peace! | | Ah! you cannot conceive it! Ever since | | That night, when, in a voice all new to me, | | Under my window you revealed your soul— | | Ah! ever since I have adored you! Now | | Your letters all this whole month long!—meseemed | | As if I heard that voice so tender, true, | | Sheltering, close! Thy fault, I say! It drew me, | | The voice o' th' night! Oh! wise Penelope | | Would ne'er have stayed to broider on her hearthstone, | | If her Ulysses could have writ such letters! | | But would have cast away her silken bobbins, | | And fled to join him, mad for love as Helen! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | But. . . |
| ROXANE: | | I read, read again—grew faint for love; | | I was thine utterly. Each separate page | | Was like a fluttering flower-petal, loosed | | From your own soul, and wafted thus to mine. | | Imprinted in each burning word was love | | Sincere, all-powerful. . . |
| CHRISTIAN: | | A love sincere! | | Can that be felt, Roxane! |
| ROXANE: | | Ay, that it can! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | You come. . .? |
| ROXANE: | | O, Christian, my true lord, I come— | | (Were I to throw myself, here, at your knees, | | You would raise me—but 'tis my soul I lay | | At your feet—you can raise it nevermore!) | | —I come to crave your pardon. (Ay, 'tis time | | To sue for pardon, now that death may come!) | | For the insult done to you when, frivolous, | | At first I loved you only for your face! |
| CHRISTIAN (horror-stricken): | | Roxane! |
| ROXANE: | | And later, love—less frivolous— | | Like a bird that spreads its wings, but can not fly— | | Arrested by your beauty, by your soul | | Drawn close—I loved for both at once! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | And now? |
| ROXANE: | | Ah! you yourself have triumphed o'er yourself, | | And now, I love you only for your soul! |
| CHRISTIAN (stepping backward): | | Roxane! |
| ROXANE: | | Be happy. To be loved for beauty— | | A poor disguise that time so soon wears threadbare— | | Must be to noble souls—to souls aspiring— | | A torture. Your dear thoughts have now effaced | | That beauty that so won me at the outset. | | Now I see clearer—and I no more see it! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Oh!. . . |
| ROXANE: | | You are doubtful of such victory? |
| CHRISTIAN (pained): | | Roxane! |
| ROXANE: | | I see you cannot yet believe it. | | Such love. . .? |
| CHRISTIAN: | | I do not ask such love as that! | | I would be loved more simply; for. . . |
| ROXANE: | | For that | | Which they have all in turns loved in thee?— | | Shame! | | Oh! be loved henceforth in a better way! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | No! the first love was best! |
| ROXANE: | | Ah! how you err! | | 'Tis now that I love best—love well! 'Tis that | | Which is thy true self, see!—that I adore! | | Were your brilliance dimmed. . . |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Hush! |
| ROXANE: | | I should love still! | | Ay, if your beauty should to-day depart. . . |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Say not so! |
| ROXANE: | | Ay, I say it! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | Ugly? How? |
| ROXANE: | | Ugly! I swear I'd love you still! |
| CHRISTIAN: | | My God! |
| ROXANE: | | Are you content at last? |
| CHRISTIAN (in a choked voice): | | Ay!. . . |
| ROXANE: | | What is wrong? |
| CHRISTIAN (gently pushing her away): | | Nothing. . .I have two words to say:—one second. . . |
| ROXANE: | | But?. . . |
| CHRISTIAN (pointing to the cadets): | | Those poor fellows, shortly doomed to death,— | | My love deprives them of the sight of you: | | Go,—speak to them—smile on them ere they die! |
| ROXANE (deeply affected): | | Dear Christian!. . . |
| (She goes up to the cadets, who respectfully crowd round her.) |
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