Astraea:  You should look higher.

Arden: 
               Through you to the highest.  Only through you! 
                    Through you
               The mark I may attain is visible,
               And I have strength to dream of winning it. 
               You are the bow that speeds the arrow:  you
               The glass that brings the distance nigh.  My world
               Is luminous through you, pure heavenly,
               But hangs upon the rose’s outer leaf,
               Not next her heart.  Astraea! my own beloved!

Astraea:  We may be excellent friends.  And I have faults.

Arden:  Name them:  I am hungering for more to love.

Astraea: 
               I waver very constantly:  I have
               No fixity of feeling or of sight. 
               I have no courage:  I can often dream
               Of daring:  when I wake I am in dread. 
               I am inconstant as a butterfly,
               And shallow as a brook with little fish! 
               Strange little fish, that tempt the small boy’s net,
               But at a touch straight dive!  I am any one’s,
               And no one’s!  I am vain. 
               Praise of my beauty lodges in my ears. 
               The lark reels up with it; the nightingale
               Sobs bleeding; the flowers nod; I could believe
               A poet, though he praised me to my face.

Arden: 
               Never had poet so divine a fount
               To drink of!

Astraea: 
               Have I given you more to love

Arden: 
               More!  You have given me your inner mind,
               Where conscience in the robes of Justice shoots
               Light so serenely keen that in such light
               Fair infants, I newly criminal of earth,’
               As your friend Osier says, might show some blot. 
               Seraphs might!  More to love?  Oh! these dear faults
               Lead you to me like troops of laughing girls
               With garlands.  All the fear is, that you trifle,
               Feigning them.

Astraea: 
               For what purpose?

Arden: 
                         Can I guess?

Astraea: 

               I think ’tis you who have the trifler’s note. 
               My hearing is acute, and when you speak,
               Two voices ring, though you speak fervidly. 
               Your Osier quotation jars.  Beware! 
               Why were you absent from our meeting-place
               This morning?

.

Arden: 
                    I was on the way, and met
               Your uncle Homeware

Astraea:  Ah!