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o voices ring, though you speak fervidly. Your Osier quotation jars. Beware! Why were you absent from our meeting-place This morning? ARDEN: I was on the way, and met Your uncle Homeware ASTRAEA: Ah! ARDEN: He loves you. ASTRAEA: He loves me: he has never understood. He loves me as a creature of the flock; A little whiter than some others. Yes; He loves me, as men love; not to uplift; Not to have faith in; not to spiritualize. For him I am a woman and a widow One of the flock, unmarked save by a brand. He said it!--You confess it! You have learnt To share his error, erring fatally. 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 r
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