Sundown is soon to-day: it is cold and dark. Now ten steps more, and much will have been done. One. Two. Three. Four. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Sixteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Thirty. Thirty-one. At last the turn. Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty. Now only once again. Two. Three. What do the voices say? I hear too many. The door: but here there is no garden ... Ah!

[She holds herself up an instant by the door-curtains; then she reels and falls, her body in the room, her head and shoulders beyond the curtains.]

[GONERIL enters by the door beyond the bed, carrying the filled cup carefully in both hands.]

Goneril:

Where are you? What have you done? Speak to me.

[Turning and seeing HYGD, she lets the cup fall and leaps to the open door by the bed.]

Merryn, hither, hither ... Mother, O mother!

[She goes to HYGD. MERRYN enters.]

Merryn:

Princess, what has she done? Who has left her? She must have been alone.

Goneril:

Where is Gormflaith?

Merryn:

Mercy o' mercies, everybody asks me For Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, And I ask everybody else for her; But she is nowhere, and the King will foam. Send me no more; I am old with running about After a bodiless name.

Goneril:

She has been here, And she has left the Queen. This is her deed.

Merryn:

Ah, cruel, cruel! The shame, the pity--

Goneril:

Lift.

[Together they raise HYGD, and carry her to bed.]

She breathes, but something flitters under her flesh: Wynoc the leech must help us now. Go, run, Seek him, and come back quickly, and do not dare To come without him.

Merryn:

It is useless, lady: There's fever at the cowherd's in the marsh, And Wynoc broods above it twice a day, And I have lately seen him hobble thither.

Goneril:

I never heard such scornful wickedness As that a king's physician so should choose To watch and even heal base men and poor-- And, more than all, when there's a queen a-dying ...

Hygd (recovering consciousness):

Whence come you, dearest daughter? What have I done? Are you a dream? I thought I was alone. Have you been hunting on the Windy Height? Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting. Or have I heard you singing through my sleep? Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts Of what the ways of life will do to you To mould and maim you, and I have a power To bring these to expression that I knew not. Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown? I am falling, falling! Lift me: hold me up.

[GONERIL climbs on the bed and supports HYGD against her shoulder.]

It is the bed that breaks, for still I sink. Grip harder: I am slipping!

Goneril:

Woman, help!

[MERRYN hurries round to the front of the bed and supports HYGD on her other side. HYGD points at the far corner of the room.]

Hygd:

Why is the King's mother standing there? She should not wear her crown before me now. Send her away, she had a savage mind. Will you not hang a shawl across the corner So that she cannot stare at me again?

[With a rending sob she buries her face in GONERIL'S bosom.]

Ah, she is coming! Do not let her touch me! Brave splendid daughter, how easily you save me: But soon will Gormflaith come, she stays for ever. O, will she bring my crown to me once more? Yes, Gormflaith, yes ... Daughter, pay Gormflaith well.

Goneril:

Gormflaith has left you lonely: 'Tis Gormflaith who shall pay.

Hygd:

No, Gormflaith; Gormflaith ... Not my loneliness ... Everything ... Pay Gormflaith ...

[Her head falls back over GONERIL'S shoulder and she dies.]

Goneril (laying Hygd down in bed again):

Send horsemen to the marshes for the leech, And let them bind him on a horse's back