Mortadello

OR, THE ANGEL OF VENICE 21 MONICA. Who knows ? Dive ! Bear it heedfully. ORLANDO. And whither ? MONICA. To my house. Here ! take my ring. I go to concentrate my power. My sworn allies must know. I join you in an hour. I will make time to-night, though death lurked in the curtain. An hour for our delight, make one dream sure and certain ! Though all else fail, one hour shall spell supreme success, The bee drink of the flower, strength link with loveliness. ORLANDO. Torrents of ravening blood poured from the desolate steeps, Tumultuous fever of flood from the mountain that sweeps I would drain for this inaccessible thing made mine— The ineffable bliss, the song of the spring, to be thine ! I would drink molten gold, and walk on white-hot steel, Once, only once to hold your body, once to feel The annihilation of sense and spirit in your caress, The imminent and intense bolt of your loveliness. MONICA. Well, yours the right reward of love and death. Time calls. Hell’s master hath toward a banquet in his halls. I am the whirlpool’s leap wherein the state shall founder There’s many now asleep next week shall slumber sounder. [She glides over the bridge as ORLANDO, stripped, dives for the body of the LADY MAGDALENA.