Ablamore has been surnamed "The Wise";[1] he was wise because nothing had happened to him, because hitherto he had lived
"In apathy of life unrealised, And days to Lethe floating unenjoyed."
But now he stands on his turrets and summons the events which had avoided him. They come--and they overpower him. It is love that brings the events. "How beautiful she is," he says, bending over Alladine while she is asleep. "I will kiss her without her knowing it, holding back my poor white beard." He would fain make her his queen; but she returns the love which Palomides, untrue to Astolaine, conceives for her. Astolaine discovers the truth; but she, the first of Maeterlinck's strong, emancipated women, feels no jealousy. Her behaviour is similar to that of Selysette in a later play; but her character is identical with Aglavaine's in that play: the rôles of the women in _Aglavaine and Selysette_ are reversed. It is Aglavaine's beautiful soul for the sake of which Méléandre is untrue to Selysette. Palomides recognises, when his love turns from the woman to the child, "that there must be something more incomprehensible than the beauty of the most beautiful soul or the most beautiful face"; and something more powerful too, for he cannot help obeying it. Palomides is quite aware that Astolaine is a type superior to Alladine. He loves her even when he is faithless. "I love you," he says to her, "more than her I love." (The situation is the same in Grillparzer's _Sappho_: Phaon prefers Melitta, also a little Greek slave, to the renowned and noble poetess.) "She has a soul," Palomides says of Astolaine, "that you can see round her, that takes you in its arms as though you were a suffering child, and which, without speaking, consoles you for everything...." This doctrine of the soul's fluidity appears in the scene in which Astolaine tells her father that she has ceased to love Palomides:
ABLAMORE: Come hither, Astolaine. It is not so that you were accustomed to speak to your father. You are waiting there, on the threshold of a door that is hardly open, as though you were ready to run away; and with your hand on the key, as though you wished to close the secret of your heart on me for ever. You know well that I have not understood what you have just said, and that words have no meaning when souls are not within reach of each other. Come nearer, and speak no more. (ASTOLAINE _comes slowly nearer_.) There is a moment when souls touch and know everything without there being any need of moving the lips. Come nearer.... Our souls do not reach each other yet, and their ray[2] is so dim around us!... (ASTOLAINE _holds still_.) You dare not?--You know then how far one can go? Very well then, I will come to you.... (_With slow steps he comes near_ ASTOLAINE, _then stops, and looks at her long_.) I see you, Astolaine....