Page:The great Galeoto; Folly or saintliness; two plays done from the verse of José Echegaray into English prose by Hannah Lynch (IA greatgaleotofoll00echerich).djvu/17

 . 'Tis not so. You do not understand me.

. Yes, I understand you. You have only loved Jaime.

. So deeply have I loved you, Manfred, that I have forsaken Jaime, noble as he is, for you who are so base. I have given myself to you, drawn by the attraction of the abyss which is your love. And I thought that I could live and be happy under cover of my sin, but it may not be. For ever between my breast and your arms he interposes.

They try to persuade themselves upon insufficient evidence that Jaime is dead, but Beatrix, the more nervous and impressionable of the two, endures the conviction of her senses that her husband lives as the added torture of fear to insistent remorse. Every sound that disturbs the silence, as they sit together by the fire, carries menace of his approach. 'Why are we not happy since we love one another?' Manfred bitterly cries, interrupting her terrified listening. Here is the keynote of Echegaray's philosophy, whether he marshals the dead centuries before us, or treats of the modern conscience. Even in the less complex ages, when the world was younger and fresher, he will not hear of obedience to instinct unpunished before even the fruit has had time to turn to ashes.

We understand that we are commanded to contemplate unrelieved gloom of sentiment and situation upon the entrance of Don Jaime, back from the Roussillon wars in company with Don Pedro, king of Aragon. The guilty lovers have an enemy in one Juana, the duenna and wife of Roger, the squire, who, discovering Beatrix and Manfred in a passionate embrace, is set upon by the infuriated bastard and inadvertently driven upon the sword's point xiii