Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 227

[_To Violante._]

Now, Lady Violante, you must go!

VIOLANTE [_indignant_]

How? I must go?

LIZZIA

You would not stay?

VIOLANTE

Yea, I would stay to see this love grow dark And shrink to hate.

OLIVIA [_astonished_]

And shrink to hate?

VIOLANTE

When you remove your veil Behind which ugliness that beggars h.e.l.l Lies hidden--

OLIVIA [_dazed_]

Ugliness?

VIOLANTE

Cast by your veil!...

Well may you shrink from your own hideousness Since the foul plague has withered up your face And seared it till you die....

There shines your mirror, wrought of polished bra.s.s-- How many hours you have dallied at it Only the beauty that you once possessed Can tell.

You will no longer find a use for it.

OLIVIA [_recovering herself_]

I trust I shall!

LIZZIA [_to Olivia_]

Alas, dear G.o.d! And is it true, Olivia?

OLIVIA [_to Lizzia_]

Would he not love me still if it were true?

LIZZIA [_to Olivia_]

I am old and wretched and full of woe.

I have known life too long.

VIOLANTE [_to Olivia_]

He whose one cry is beauty! How could _that_ be?

OLIVIA [_almost singing in speech_]

Then, G.o.d be praised, I need not try him thus!

For G.o.d has wrought two miracles with me: I live, and I am beautiful!

VIOLANTE

Unveil your face, then--give yourself to sight.

OLIVIA

His must be the first eyes that look on me.

VIOLANTE

Ah, so you trust that you, with fond deceit, May find some magic way to cozen him?

LIZZIA [_with great emotion_]

Go, Lady--I see darkness in the air, I thrill to some strange horror, yet unguessed....

Go, Lady Violante, I pray you, go!

[_Lizzia lifts arras in back for Violante's exit. Violante does not move from where she stands._]

VIOLANTE [_persistently, to Olivia_]

Woman it is your beauty that he loved, And that alone ... just as he loves a flower Or sunset.... That gone, lo, his love is gone!