SCENE 5

THE SAME. SOEMUS.

SOEMUS.

The bloody work Is brought to end; but all Jerusalem Stands stock-still asking why the man whom you Ordained to represent your person when you Made journey hence, now at your coming back Should be compelled to lose his head.

SALOME (_collapsing_).

Woe’s me!

[MARIAMNE _goes to catch her_.

SALOME.

Away, away! (_To_ HEROD.) And she?

HEROD.

Content you, sister! Your husband has most heinously deceived me--

SALOME.

And she?

HEROD.

What you think is not so.

SALOME.

Not so? How then? Your will’s to save her? If my husband Deceived you heinously she did it too; For what I said is true, and every man Shall know it though he not yet know. And you Shall wash yourself in her blood as in his, Else ne’er be clean again. At least that’s so![10]

HEROD.

By all that I hold sacred----

SALOME.

Nay then, name His misdeed to me if it were not such.

HEROD.

Were I to name it I would make it greater. There was a secret I’d entrusted to him On which my All was hanging, and this secret He has betrayed; shall I then do the same?

SALOME.

Pitiful shuffling for my scare contrived! You think you can outwit me? You believe In all that I have said, and yet you are Too strengthless-willed your love to understifle And rather choose the shrine to overcloak That you’ll not stamp to nothing. But unless You murder me, your sister, with my husband, It will miscarry with you. (_To_ MARIAMNE.) He is dead! Now you can swear what pleases you; he will Not contradict you!

[_Exit._

HEROD.

Follow her, Soemus, And seek to win her to a calm! You know her And she ere now has given you willing ear.

SOEMUS.

Those times are now no longer; but I go!

[_Exit._

MAR. (_aside_).

For him who meant my murder I might well Be loath to supplicate; and yet I shudder That not the respite even for that was left me.

HEROD (_aside_).

’Twas soon or late with him! In the next war He had been stationed in Uriah’s place! And yet I rue this hasty hotness now.

[_Enter_ A COURIER.