_LOPE discovered._
_Lope._ Whither then have they brought me? Ah, Violante,
Your beauty costs me dear! And even now
I count the little I have yet to live
Minute by minute, like one last sweet draught,
But for your sake. Nay, ’tis not life I care for,
But only Violante.
_Violante_ (_entering unseen_). Oh, his face
Is bathed in his own blood; he has been wounded.
Don Lope!
_Lope._ Who is it calls on a name
I thought all tongues had buried in its shame?
_Viol._ One who yet—pities you.
_Lope_ (_turning and seeing her_). Am I then dead,
And thou some living spirit come to meet me
Upon the threshold of another world;
Or some dead image that my living brain
Draws from remembrance on the viewless air,
And gives the voice I love to? Oh, being here,
Whatever thou may’st be, torment me not
By vanishing at once.
_Viol._ No spirit, Lope,
And no delusive image of the brain;
But one who, wretched in your wretchedness,
And partner of the crime you suffer for,
All risk of shame and danger cast away,
Has come—but hark!—I may have but a moment—
The door I came by will be left unlockt
To-night, and you must fly.
_Lope._ Oh, I have heard
Of a fair flower of such strange quality,
It makes a wound where there was none before,
And heals what wound there was. Oh, Violante,
You who first made an unscathed heart to bleed,
Now save a desperate life!
_Viol._ And I have heard
Of two yet stranger flowers that, severally,
Each in its heart a deadly poison holds,
Which, if they join, turns to a sovereign balm.
And so with us, who in our bosoms bear
A passion which destroys us when apart,
But when together—
_Elvira_ (_calling within_). Madam! madam! your father!
_Viol._ Farewell!
_Lope._ But you return?
_Viol._ To set you free.
_Lope._ That as it may; only return to me.
[_Exit VIOLANTE, leaving LOPE._