Vashti.  Indeed, a spectre.

1st Woman. 
     That have I never seen. 
Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp To an eagle’s bill, and claws upon its fingers, The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue?

Vashti.  The spectre was—­my beauty.

3rd Woman. 
     It is as I said. 
O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning; And let him leech thy spirit.

4th Woman. 
     I’ve heard, the best
Riddance for evil notions in the mind,
Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue;
While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells
Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg’d deep
Into the soul; so that it passeth down,
Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad,—­

3rd Woman.  Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it,—­

4th Woman.  Then the trapt notion may be easily burnt.

Vashti.  Yea?—­I think mine would not burn easily.  With fire, with such indignant fire as pride Yields, when it must destroy itself to feel The power of the world touch it with humbling flame,—­ With such a fire, whose heat you know not of, Have I assayed this—­notion, didst thou say?  And it stood upright, with its shape unquencht, And lived within the fire.

3rd Woman. 
     Thou hast it wrong.

4th Woman.  Thou hast not understood the cure we meant.

2nd Woman.  Stop brabbling, fools; I would hear the Queen’s mind.

1st Woman.  I too; I hate a thing I cannot skill; And thee and all that lives in thee, O Queen, I would keep friendly to my spirit; yet I do suspect something amazing in thee.

Vashti.  And if thou seest not how slippery Is women’s place in the world of men, ’tis like Thou wilt amazedly the vision take, When I have led thee up my tower of thought.

2nd Woman.  How are we dangerous?  Are we not women, Man’s endless need?

Vashti. 
     Ay, and therein the danger! 
Is it not possible he hate the need? 
For not as he were a beast it urges him: 
He is aware of it, he knows its force,—­
The kind of beasts is in their blood alone,
But man is blood and spirit.  And in him,
As in all creature, is the word from God,
“Utter thyself in joy.”

2nd Woman. 
     And we his joy.

Vashti. 
But such an one that may become, perhaps,
Something not utterance, but strict commanding,
Yea, mastery, like the dancing in the blood
Of one bitten by spiders.  And it is Spirit,
Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent
A beating poison in the blood of man,
The poison which is lust.  Spirit was given
To use life as a sense for ecstasy;
Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond
Sex-madden’d men and sex-serving women,
Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love
Is as the air wherein a music rings.