g in his face, as he slept, which
resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.

She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun
to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against
the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near
kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that
day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door
against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered
how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of
offence to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular
to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their
subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favours
of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men,
and how would those honours be stained by the reputation of so foul a
murder!

In these conflicts of the mind lady Macbeth found her husband,
inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But
she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to
pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit
into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink
from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would
be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their
nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw
contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and
cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender
it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would, while it was
smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its
brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform
that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt
of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms. And with the valour of her
tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more
summoned up courage to the bloody business.

So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to
the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another
dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and
at the point of it drops of blood: but when he tried to grasp at it,
it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot
and oppressed brain and the business he had in han