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!

Arden:  He loves you.

Astraea: 
        He loves me:  he has never understood. 
        He loves me as a creature of the flock;
        A little whiter than some others. 
        Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift;
        Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize. 
        For him I am a woman and a widow
        One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand. 
        He said it!—­You confess it!  You have learnt
        To share his error, erring fatally.