MIRALDA

I want to be crowned queen.

JOHN

But I am not a king.  I am only Shereef.

MIRALDA

You are all-powerful here, John, you can do what you please, if you wish to.  You don’t love me at all.

JOHN

Miralda, you know I love you.  Didn’t
I kill Hussein for you?

MIRALDA

Yes, but you don’t love me now.

JOHN

And Hussein’s people killed Archie.  That was for you too.  I brought my brother out here to help you.  He was engaged to be married, too.

MIRALDA

But you don’t love me now.

JOHN

Yes, I do.  I love you as the dawn loves the iris marshes.  You know the song they sing. (footnote:  poem just before Act III)

MIRALDA

Then why won’t you marry me?

JOHN

I told you, I told you.  I had a dream about the future.  I forgot the dream, but I know I was not to marry.  I will not wrong the future.

MIRALDA

Don’t be crazy.

JOHN

I will have what fancies I please, crazy or sane.  Am I not Shereef of Shaldomir?  Who dare stop me if I would be mad as Herod?

MIRALDA

I will be crowned queen.

JOHN

It is not my wish.

MIRALDA

I will, I will, I will.

JOHN

Drive me not to anger.  If I have you cast into a well and take twenty of the fairest daughters of Al Shaldomir in your place, who can gainsay me?

MIRALDA

I will be crowned queen.

JOHN

O, do not be tiresome.

MIRALDA

Was it not my money that brought you here?  Was it not I who said " Kill Hussein”?  What power could you have had, had Hussein lived?  What would you have been doing now, but for me?

JOHN

I don’t know, Miralda.

MIRALDA

Catching some silly train to the City.  Working for some dull firm.  Living in some small suburban house.  It is I, I, that brought you from all that, and you won’t make me a queen.