No More Learning

She answers not:
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
But not its cause; suffering has dried away _35
The source from which it sprung. . .

BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]:
Like Parricide. . .
Misery has killed its father: yet its father
Never like mine. . . O, God! What thing am I?

LUCRETIA:
My dearest child, what has your father done?

BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]:
Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. _40
[ASIDE.
]
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE. ]
Do you know
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
From hall to hall by the entangled hair; _45
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams,
That I imagined. . . no, it cannot be! _50
Horrible things have been in this wide world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do.
But never fancy imaged such a deed _55
As. . .
[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF. ]
Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest. . .