VERA (clutching dagger): To strangle whatever nature is in me, neither to love nor to be loved, neither to pity nor – oh, I am a woman! God help me, I am a woman! O Alexis! I too have broken my oath; I am a traitor. I love. Oh, do not speak, do not speak – (kisses his lips) – the first, the last time. (He clasps her in his arms; they sit on the couch together.)

CZAR: I could die now.

VERA: What does death do in thy lips? Thy life, thy love are enemies of death. Speak not of death. Not yet, not yet.

CZAR: I know not why death came into my heart. Perchance the cup of life is filled too full of pleasure to endure. This is our wedding night.

VERA: Our wedding night!

CZAR: And if death came himself, methinks that I could kiss his pallid mouth, and such sweet poison from it.

VERA: Our wedding night! Nay, nay. Death should not sit at the feast. There is no such thing as death.

CZAR: There shall not be for us. (CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)

VERA: What is that? Did you not hear something?

CZAR: Only your voice, that fowler’s note which lures my heart away like a poor bird upon the limed twig.

VERA: Methought that someone laughed.

CZAR: It was but the wind and rain; the night is full of storm. (CONSPIRATORS murmur outside.)

VERA: It should be so, indeed. Oh, where are your guards? Where are your guards?

CZAR: Where should they be but at home? I shall not live pent round by sword and steel. The love of a people is a king’s best bodyguard.

VERA: The love of a people!

CZAR: Sweet, you are safe here. Nothing can harm you here. O love, I knew you trusted me! You said you would have trust.

VERA: I have had trust. O love, the past seems but some dull, grey dream from which our souls have wakened. This is life at last.

CZAR: Ay, life at last.

VERA: Our wedding night! Oh, let me drink my fill of love to-night! Nay, sweet, not yet, not yet. How still it is, and yet methinks the air is full of music. It is some nightingale who, wearying of the south, has come to sing in this bleak north to lovers such as we. It is the nightingale. Dost thou not hear it?

CZAR: O sweet, mine ears are clogged to all sweet sounds save thine own voice, and mine eyes blinded to all sights but thee, else had I heard that nightingale, and seen the golden-vestured morning sun itself steal from its sombre east before its time, for jealousy that thou art twice as fair.

VERA: Yet would that thou hadst heard the nightingale. Methinks that bird will never sing again.