Page:Dramas 3.pdf/329

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THE BRIDE: A DRAMA.
327

To bring from hence this precious message? Truly
Thou speak'st as if thou hadst.

JUAN.

No, I have found it in my native land,

Within the pages of a sacred book
Which I and my compatriots do believe
Contains the high revealed will of God.

RASINGA.

Ha! then those Europeans, whom the sea

Hath cast like fiends upon our eastern shores,
To wrong and spoil and steep the soil with blood,
Are not compatriots of thy book-taught land.
What! dost thou cast thine eyes upon the ground?
The stain of rushing blood is on thy cheek.
If they be so, methinks they have obey'd
That heavenly message sparingly.—Go to!
Tell me no more of this fantastic virtue,—
This mercy and forgiveness. Ev'n a woman,
A child, a simpleton would laugh to scorn
Such strange unnatural duty.

JUAN.

Call it not so till I have told thee further——

(Taking his hand.)

RASINGA.

Detain me not. But that to thee I owe