QUEEN (almost tearfully).  No, no, my dear Lord Beaconsfield, you mustn’t say that!

LORD B.(gallantly).  I won’t say anything, Madam, that you forbid, or that you dislike.  You invited me to speak to you as a friend; so I have done, so I do.  I apologise that I have allowed sadness, even for a moment, to trouble the harmony-the sweetness—­of our conversation.

QUEEN.  Pray, do not apologise!  It has been a very great privilege; I beg that you will go on!  Tell me—­you spoke of bereavement—­I wish you would tell me more—­about your wife.

(The sudden request touches some latent chord; and it is with genuine emotion that he answers.)

LORD B. Ah!  My wife!  To her I owed everything.

QUEEN.  She was devoted to you, wasn’t she?

LORD B. I never read the depth of her devotion-till after her death.  Then, Madam—­this I have told to nobody but yourself—­then I found among her papers—­addressed “to my dear husband”—­a message, written only a few days before her death, with a hand shaken by that nerve-racking and fatal malady which she endured so patiently—­begging me to marry again.

(The Queen is now really crying, and finds speech difficult.)

QUEEN.  And you, you—?  Dear Lord Beaconsfield; did you mean—­had you ever meant——?

LORD B. I did not then, Madam; nor have I ever done so since.  It is enough if I allow myself—­to love.

QUEEN.  Oh, yes, yes; I understand—­better than others would.  For that has always been my own feeling.

LORD B. In the history of my race, Madam, there has been a great tradition of faithfulness between husbands and wives.  For the hardness of our hearts, we are told, Moses permitted us to give a writing of divorcement.  But we have seldom acted on it.  In my youth I became a Christian; I married a Christian.  But that was no reason for me to desert the nobler traditions of my race—­for they are in the blood and in the heart.  When my wife died I had no thought to marry again; and when I came upon that tender wish, still I had no thought for it; my mind would not change.  Circumstances that have happened since have sealed irrevocably my resolution-never to marry again.

QUEEN.  Oh, I think that is so wise, so right, so noble of you!

(The old Statesman rises, pauses, appears to hesitate, then in a voice charged with emotion says)

LORD B. Madam, will you permit me to kiss your hand?

(The hand graciously given, and the kiss fervently implanted, he falls back once more to a respectful distance.  But the emotional excitement of the interview has told upon him, and it is in a wavering voice of weariness that he now speaks.)

LORD B. You have been very forbearing with me, Madam, not to indicate that I have outstayed either my welcome or your powers of endurance.  Yet so much conversation must necessarily have tired you.  May I then crave permission, Madam, to withdraw.  For, to speak truly, I do need some rest.