The next scene discovers Mélisande with Pelléas in the grotto. They are
deeply agitated. It is very dark, but Pelléas describes to her the look
of the place, for, he tells her, she must be able to answer Golaud if he
should question her. The moon breaks through the clouds and illumines
brightly the interior, revealing three old and white-haired beggars
asleep against a ledge of rock. Mélisande is uneasy, and would go. They
depart in silence.


ACT III

The opening scene of the third act shows the exterior of one of the
towers of the castle, with a winding staircase passing beneath a window
at which sits Mélisande, combing her unbound hair, and singing in the
starlit darkness--"like a beautiful strange bird," says Pelléas, who
enters by the winding stair. He entreats her to lean further forward out
of the window, that he may come closer, that he may touch her hand; for,
he says, he is leaving on the morrow. She leans further out, telling him
that he may take her hand if he will promise not to leave on the next
day. Suddenly her long tresses fall over her head and stream about
Pelléas. He is enraptured. "I have never seen such hair as yours,
Mélisande! See! see! Though it comes from so high, it floods me to the
heart!... And it is sweet, sweet as though it fell from heaven!... I can
no longer see the sky through your locks.... My two hands can no longer
hold them.... They are alive like birds in my hands. And they love me,
they love me more than you do!" Mélisande begs to be released, Pelléas
kisses the enveloping tresses.... "Do you hear my kisses?--They mount
along your hair." Doves come from the tower--Mélisande's doves--and fly
about them. They are frightened, and are flying away. "They will be
lost in the dark!" laments Mélisande. Golaud enters by the winding