SATAN: I offer you--Youth.
ANTONINUS: I will not traffic with you in damnation.
SATAN: I do not ask your soul, _only that shining gaud_.
ANTONINUS: Such things are not for hell.
SATAN: I offer you Youth.
ANTONINUS: I do not need it. Life is a penance and ordained as a
tribulation. I have come through by striving. Why should I care to
strive again?
SATAN (_smiles_): Why?
ANTONINUS: Why should I?
SATAN (_laughs, looking through window_): It's spring, brother, is it
not?
ANTONINUS: A time for meditation.
SATAN (_laughs_): There are girls coming over the hills, brother.
Through the green leaves and the May.
[ANTONINUS _draws his scourge from his robe._
ANTONINUS: Up! Let me scourge them from our holy place.
SATAN: Wait, brother, they are far off yet. But you would not scourge
them, you would not scourge them, they are so ... Ah! one has torn her
dress!
ANTONINUS: Ah, let me scourge her!
SATAN: No, no, brother. See, I can see her ankle through the rent. You
would not scourge her. Your great scourge would break that little ankle.
ANTONINUS: I will have my scourge ready, if she comes near our holy
place.
SATAN: She is with her comrades. They are maying. Seven girls.
(ANTONINUS _grips his scourge._) Her arms are full of may.
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