Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays is a Webnovel created by Various.
This lightnovel is currently completed.
LIZZIA [_agonized_]
My little children, you must not do this thing!
Love is too high a gift to play with so.
G.o.d only has the right to put the heart Of man to trial!
VIOLANTE [_to Lizzia_]
Will you be quiet, old woman!
OLIVIA [_to Lizzia_]
I would not hold him if he only loved My beauty, and not me. The test is just….
VIOLANTE [_to Lizzia_]
Go you, inform him of her return….
But tell him that that flower which was her face Is shriveled up and lean as any hag’s.
LIZZIA
Now G.o.d forbid I should deceive him so!
VIOLANTE
Not even for gold?
LIZZIA
Have you no fear of G.o.d?
[_A stir is heard within._]
VIOLANTE
Hush!… I will do it, then.
[_Going up to small arras over study door, she calls._]
Florio!… Florio!…
FLORIO [_from within, after a brief s.p.a.ce_]
Who is it calls me?
VIOLANTE
It is I, Violante!
FLORIO
Why have you come again?
VIOLANTE
I have returned, Florio, In strange times, bearing strange news.
FLORIO
My soul is full of death–I pray you go!
VIOLANTE
It could not be–aye, it is pa.s.sing strange!– She said her name was “Olivia.”
FLORIO
Olivia, ah, she lives!
VIOLANTE
Then, it is true? You love this shriveled woman?
FLORIO
Shriveled woman?
VIOLANTE
Ugly and bent and gray–a woman Who says in as few words she is your mistress.
FLORIO