loves you,--I. . .'

ROXANE (putting her hand on his shoulder):
How can you read? It is too dark to see!
(He starts, turns, sees her close to him. Suddenly alarmed, he holds his head
down. Then in the dusk, which has now completely enfolded them, she says,
very slowly, with clasped hands):
And, fourteen years long, he has played this part
Of the kind old friend who comes to laugh and chat.

CYRANO:
Roxane!

ROXANE:
'Twas you!

CYRANO:
No, never; Roxane, no!

ROXANE:
I should have guessed, each time he said my name!

CYRANO:
No, it was not I!

ROXANE:
It was you!

CYRANO:
I swear!

ROXANE:
I see through all the generous counterfeit--
The letters--you!

CYRANO:
No.

ROXANE:
The sweet, mad love-words!
You!

CYRANO:
No!

ROXANE:
The voice that thrilled the night--you, you!

CYRANO:
I swear you err.

ROXANE:
The soul--it was your soul!

CYRANO:
I loved you not.

ROXANE:
You loved me not?

CYRANO:
'Twas he!

ROXANE:
You loved me!

CYRANO:
No!

ROXANE:
See! how you falter now!

CYRANO:
No, my sweet love, I never loved you!

ROXANE:
Ah!
Things dead, long dead, see! how they rise again!
--Why, why keep silence all these fourteen years,
When, on this letter, which he never wrote,
The tears were your tears?

CYRANO (holding out the letter to her):
The bloodstains were his.

ROXANE:
Why, then, that noble silence,--kept so long--
Broken to-day for the first time--why?

CYRANO:
Why?. . .

(Le Bret and Ragueneau enter running.)

Scene 5.VI.

The same. Le Bret and Ragueneau.

LE BRET:
What madness! Here? I knew it well!

CYRANO (smiling and sitting up):
What now?

LE BRET:
He has brought his death by coming, Madame.

ROXANE:
God!
Ah, then! that faintness of a moment since. . .?

CYRANO:
Why, true! It interrupted the 'Gazette:'
. . .Saturday, twenty-sixth, at dinner-time,
Assassination of De Bergerac.

(He takes off his hat; they see his head bandaged.)

ROXANE:
What says he? Cyrano!--His head all bound!
Ah, what has chanced? How?--Who?. . .

CYRANO:
'To be struck down,
Pierced by sword i' the heart, from a hero's hand!'
That I had dreamed. O mockery of Fate!
--Killed, I! of all men--in an ambuscade!
Struck from behind, and by a lackey's hand!
'Tis very well. I am foiled, foiled in all,
Even in my death.

RAGUENEAU:
Ah, Mons