The Poet's Heart - scene IV (suite)

Eliza: I think he may be dying.
John: You're wrong. Men still bay with longing at the moon.
Eliza: You're lonely, aren't you?
John: Well - alone. But we're all that. And why not?
Eliza: Why don't you forget your pride for a little while?
Jhon (smiling): I mustn't forget that, Princess.
Eliza: Still, you're lonely.
John: lonely at my worst: alone at my best.
Eliza (shaking her head slowly and smiling faintly in her turn) : You want that moon so much.
John: So much that beauty and love and confort and peace and happiness won't ever do instead. So much that - that I think you'd better go. I've nothing for you, Princess. I'll never love you.
Eliza: I know.
John: Nor any other woman. And if I ever do - I won't be worth staying for.
Eliza: Thou shalt not serve God and - anything else.
John: Thou shalt have no other gods but me, for I, thy God, am a jealous god. Run, Princess! Whenever you meet a religious maniac, take to your heels and run! He'll show you no mercy! He'll skin you alive and swallow you at a gulp without pity or gratitude. For once he has felt the icy heat of religious emotion that make a man climb mountains without stopping for breath, without need of applause or encouragement save from his own beating heart, that needs no lover's flattery to warm it and no pale lovelight to illuminate it, there's an enemy to strike terror into a woman's bones! The emotion that excludes her, that makes her an incident instead of a need! Let her run from it like the plague: let her be content with that satisfaction she can get from the irreligious men who cling necessitously to her knees! (A pause.) Unless - unless she be a great princess and prefers pain with the mountaineers to peace with the beachcombers.
(A long silence.)
Eliza: I love you.
John: I'll break your heart, Princess.
Eliza (her eyes wet): I'm giving you my heart to break.
John: Aren't you afraid?
Eliza: A little. Give me your hand.
(He does do. She holds it very tight while she gazes with blurred vision into the coal-flames.)