QUEEN: It was true!

[_She s.n.a.t.c.hes her hand away._

Ah, I remember it. It was true.

ZOON: All is unreal but love, my crowned Zoomzoomarma. Where there was not love it cannot have been true.

[_He tries to take her hand again._

QUEEN: Touch not my hand. It was true.

ZOON: What was the saying heard in the dream of Earth that was true?

QUEEN: None is worthy to touch my hand; no, none.

ZOON: By Aether Mountain, I will kiss your hand again! What is this saying out of a dream that dares deny reality?

QUEEN: It is true! Oh, it is true!

ZOON: Out of that hurried, aimless dream, that knows not its own end even, you have brought me a saying and say it against love.

QUEEN: I say it is true!

ZOON: Nothing is true against love. Fate only is greater.

QUEEN: Then it is Fate.

ZOON: Against Fate I will kiss your hand again.

QUEEN: None are worthy. No, none.

[_She draws her rapier._

ZOON: I will kiss your hand again.

QUEEN: It must be this (_pointing with rapier_) for none are worthy.

ZOON: Though it be death I kiss your hand again.

QUEEN: It is certain death.

ZOON: Oh, Zoomzoomarma, forget that troubled dream, and things said by dreamers, while I kiss your hand in heaven if only once again.

QUEEN: None are worthy. It is death. None are worthy. None.

ZOON: Though it be death, yet once again upon Aether Mountain in heaven I kiss your hand.

QUEEN: Away! It is death. Upon the word of a Queen.

ZOON: I kiss your h ...

[_She standing kills him kneeling. He falls off Aether Mountain, behind it out of sight._

[_As he falls he calls her name after intervals. She kneels upon the summit and watches him falling, falling, falling._

[_Fainter and fainter as he falls from that tremendous height comes up her name as he calls it._

Zoomzoomarma! Zoomzoomarma! Zoomzoomarma!

[_Still she is watching and he is falling still._

[_At last when his cry of_ ZOOMZOOMARMA _comes almost unheard to that incredible height and then is heard no more, she turns, and with infinite neatness picking up her skirts steps down daintily over the snow._

[_She is going Earthward as the curtain falls._

CURTAIN.

CHEEZO

_DRAMATIS PERSONae_

SLADDER, _a successful man_.

SPLURGE, _his secretary and publicity agent_.

THE REV. CHARLES HIPPANTHIGH.

BUTLER.

MRS. SLADDER.

ERMYNTRUDE SLADDER.

SCENE

_The big house that_ SLADDER _has bought in the country._ SLADDER'S _study. Large French window opening on to a lawn._

_Time: Now._

SLADDER'S _daughter is seated in an armchair tapping on the arm of it a little impatiently._

_The door opens very cautiously, and the head of_ MRS. SLADDER _is put round it._

MRS. SLADDER: O, Ermyntrude. Whatever are you doing here?

ERMYNTRUDE: I wanted to speak to father, mother.