e MERCHANT slightly removed
from the rest. SOBEIDE gently releases
herself. Her veil hangs down behind her.
She wears a string of pearls in her hair,
a larger one about her neck.]

FATHER.
From much in life I have been forced to part.
This is the hardest. My beloved daughter,
This is the day which I began to dread
When still I saw thee smiling in thy cradle,
And which has been my nightmare o'er and o'er.
(To the MERCHANT.)
Forgive me. She is more to me than child.
I give thee that for which I have no name,
For every name comprises but a part--
But she was everything to me!

SOBEIDE.
Dear father,
My mother will be with thee.

MOTHER (gently).
Cross him not:
He is quite right to overlook his wife.
I have become a part of his own being,
What strikes me, strikes him too; but what I do
Affects him only as when right and left
Of his own body meet. Meanwhile, however,
The soul remains through all its days a nursling,
And reaches out for breasts more full of life,
Farewell. Be no worse helpmeet than I was,
And mayst thou be as happy too. This word
Embraces all.

SOBEIDE.
Embrace--that is the word;
Till now my fate was in your own embraced,
But now the life of this man standing here
Swings wide its gates, and in this single moment
I breathe for once the blessed air of freedom:
No longer yours, and still not his as yet.
I beg you, go; for this unwonted thing,
As new to me as wine, has greater power,
And makes me view my life and his and yours
With other eyes than were perhaps befitting.
(With a forced smile.)
I beg you, look not in such wonderment:
Such notions oft go flitting through my head,
Nor dream nor yet reality. Ye know,
As child I was much worse. And then the dance
Which I invented, is't not such a thing:
Wherein from torchlight and the black of night
I made myself a shifting, drifting palace,
From which I then e