Arden:  By whose advice went I to him?

Astraea: 
               By whose? 
        Pursuit that seemed incessant:  persecution. 
        Besides, I have changed since then:  I change; I change;
        It is too true I change.  I could esteem
        You better did you change.  And had you heard
        The noble words this morning from the mouth
        Of our professor, changed were you, or raised
        Above love-thoughts, love-talk, and flame and flutter,
        High as eternal snows.  What said he else,
        My uncle Homeware?

Arden: 
             That you were not free: 
        And that he counselled us to use our wits.

Astraea: 
        But I am free I free to be ever free! 
        My freedom keeps me free!  He counselled us? 
        I am not one in a conspiracy. 
        I scheme no discord with my present life. 
        Who does, I cannot look on as my friend. 
        Not free?  You know me little.  Were I chained,
        For liberty I would sell liberty
        To him who helped me to an hour’s release. 
        But having perfect freedom . . .

Arden:  No.

Astraea: 
        Good sir,
        You check me?

Arden:  Perfect freedom?

Astraea:  Perfect!

Arden:  No!

Astraea:  Am I awake?  What blinds me?

Arden: 
                  Filaments
        The slenderest ever woven about a brain
        From the brain’s mists, by the little sprite called
          Fancy. 
        A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
        Must come of animation.  When the heart
        Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.

Astraea: 
        ’Tis very singular! 
        I understand. 
        You translate cleverly.  I hear in verse
        My uncle Homeware’s prose.  He has these notions. 
        Old men presume to read us.

Arden: 
        Young men may. 
        You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
        Need I say beautiful?  Yet it reflects
        Less beauty than the lady whom I love
        Breathes, radiates.  Look on yourself in me. 
        What harm in gazing?  You are this flower
        You are that spirit.  But the spirit fed
        With substance of the flower takes all its bloom! 
        And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?

Astraea: 
        ’Tis very singular.  You have a tone
        Quite changed.

Arden: 
        You wished a change.  To show you, how
        I read you . . .

Astraea: 
        Oh! no, no.  It means dissection. 
        I never heard of reading character
        That did not mean dissection.  Spare me that. 
        I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
        Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
        A star-gazer, a riband in the wind . . .