letter from his dying friend Marcellus, summoning him to his bedside,
and that he may perhaps go away on the morrow. "Oh! why do you go away?"
says Mélisande.


ACT II

The second act begins at an old and abandoned fountain in the park--the
"Fountain of the Blind," so called because it once possessed miraculous
healing powers. Pelléas and Mélisande enter together. It is a stifling
day, and they seek the cool tranquillity of the fountain and the shadow
of the overarching trees--"One can hear the water sleep," says Pelléas.
Their talk is dangerously intimate. Mélisande dips her hand in the cool
water, and plays with her wedding-ring as she lies stretched along the
edge of the marble basin. She throws the ring in the air and it falls
into the deep water. Mélisande displays agitation: "What shall we say if
Golaud asks where it is?" "The truth, the truth," replies Pelléas.

The scene changes to an apartment in the castle. Golaud lies upon a bed,
with Mélisande bending over him. He has been wounded while hunting.
Mélisande is compassionate, perhaps remorseful. She too, she confesses,
is ill, unhappy, though she will not tell Golaud what it is that ails
her. Her husband discovers the absence of her wedding-ring, and harshly,
suspiciously, asks where it is. Mélisande, confused and terrified,
dissembles, and answers that she must have lost it in a grotto by the
seashore, when she went there in the morning to pick shells for little
Yniold. She is sure it is there. Golaud bids her go at once and search
for it. She fears to go alone, and he suggests that she ask Pelléas to
accompany her.