1st Woman.  Shall woman then not love to have man’s love?

3rd Woman.  To feed his heart on us, thou sayest?  O yea!  And how can a woman know such might of living As when upon her breast she feels the man, The man of her desire, like sacrament Feeding his heart, yea and his soul, on her?

Vashti.  Are we for nought but so to nourish him?

3rd Woman.  Thou art too proud, O Queen, too proud and lonely, And goest apart to have thy thought too much.  ’Tis known, too much thought dazes oft a mind, Till it can learn nought of the signed evil God hath put in the faces of evil notions, That spiritual sight may ken them coming Sly and demure, and safely shut the brain Ere they be in and swell themselves to lordship.  Hence is it that an evil thought in thee Hath dared so far, and played its wickedness Strangely within thee, braving even into speech.

1st Woman.  Strangely indeed thy brain’s inhabited.  What, is there aught prosperity for woman But to be shining in the thought of man?

Vashti.  I wisht to prosper in the life I had, That the Gods might approve the flourishing Their heavenly graft of soul took from my flesh.  Therefore I wisht to love.  And I did love.—­ There came Ahasuerus conquering Into my father’s land.  My fancying hate Had made a man-beast of him, a thing, like man, Tall in his walk, but in the mood of his eyes A beast, and in the noise of his mouth a beast.  He came, and lookt at me; and, in a while, I saw that he was speaking to me there.  And all the maiden went in me before him, Swifter than in a moon which looks against The morning, all the silver courage fails.—­ How cam’st thou to the King?

1st Woman. 
     Sold to him, I.

2nd Woman.  Bought by him, I:  for he had heard of me.

Vashti.  I also, sold or bought; nay, rather paid:  Paid like cash to him, that as servant king My father might have life, and a throne in life.  It mattered nothing then. [The QUEEN pauses.  Often in early summer, as I walkt A girl singing her happiness, beside The high green corn, holding all earth my own, I saw, as my feet and my voice past by, How in its hiding some croucht little beast Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn
With plunging quivering fear.  And always then
My heart answer’d the fear that shook the corn,
With a sudden doubt in its beating; for I knew
Within my life such rousing of dismay I myself should watch, with seizing wonder.  It was so:  in the midst of my new love, That promist such a plenty in my soul, At last some sleeping terror leapt awake, And made the young growth shiver and wry about Inwardly tormented.  Yea, and my heart It was, my heart in its hiding of green love, That took so wildly the approaching sound Of something strangely fearful walking near.

3rd Woman.  A queer tale, this.

1st Woman. 
     A spectre visited you?