only a man and not Gog-Owza, most terrible of the gods. I should be able to sleep then.

King Karnos: [Soothingly]

Yes, yes.

[Enter Attendant]

Here comes the man that I have sent to find him. You have found the lute player. Tell the queen that you have found the lute player.

Attendant:

The camel-guard have searched, your Majesty, and cannot find any man that is playing a lute.

[Curtain]

Act III

[Three days elapse.]

Tharmia:

We have done too much. We have done too much. Our husbands will be put to death. The prophet will betray them and they will be put to death.

Arolind:

O what shall we do?

Tharmia:

It would have been better for us to have been clothed with rags than to bring our husbands to death by what we have done.

Arolind:

We have done much and we have angered a king, and (who knows!) we may have angered even the gods.

Tharmia:

Even the gods! We are become like Helen. When my mother was a child she saw her once. She says she was the quietest and gentlest of creatures and wished only to be loved, and yet because of her there was a war for four or five years at Troy, and the city was burned which had remarkable towers; and some of the gods of the Greeks took her side, my mother says, and some she says were against her, and they quarrelled upon Olympus where they live, and all because of Helen.

Arolind:

O don't, don't. It frightens me. I only want to be prettily dressed and see my husband happy.