beside the fountain. Mélisande flees in terror, crying out as she goes,
"Oh! oh! I have no courage! I have no courage!"

Golaud pursues her in silence through the forest.


ACT V

The last act opens in an apartment in the castle. Mélisande is stretched
unconscious upon a bed. Golaud, Arkël, and the physician stand in a
corner of the room. Some days earlier Mélisande and her husband had
been found stretched out senseless before the castle gate, Golaud having
still in his side the sword with which he had sought to kill himself.
Mélisande had been wounded,--"a tiny little wound that would not kill a
pigeon;" yet her life is despaired of; and on her death-bed she has been
delivered of a child--"a puny little girl such as a beggar might be
ashamed to own--a little waxen thing that came before its time, that can
be kept alive only by being wrapped in wool." The room is very silent.
"It seems to me that we keep too still in her room," says Arkël; "it is
not a good sign; look how she sleeps--how slowly.--It is as if her soul
were forever chilled." Golaud laments that he has killed her without
cause. "They had kissed like little children--and I--I did it in spite
of myself!" Mélisande wakes. She wishes to have the window open, that
she may see the sunset. She has never felt better, she says, in answer
to Arkël's questioning. She asks if she is alone in the room. Her
husband is present, answers Arkël. "If you are afraid, he will go away.
He is very unhappy." "Golaud is here?" she says; "why does he not come
to me?" Golaud staggers to the bed. He begs the others to withdraw for a
moment, as he must speak with her alone. When they have left him, his
torturing suspicions, suspicions that will not down, find voice. He