Aglavaine on her part does not know whether he is her radiance or whether she is becoming his light. Everything is so joined in their beings that it is no longer possible to say where the one begins and where the other ends. (Pure love, according to the essays, is "a furtive but extremely penetrating recollection of the great primitive unity."[4]) They think of loving each other like brother and sister; but they know in their hearts that it will not be possible. (The senses are beginning to intrude into Maeterlinck's writings.) Nor can they run away from each other, or, at least, they make out they cannot: "A thing so beautiful," says Méléandre, "was not born to die; and we have duties towards ourselves." They kiss; a cry of pain is heard among the trees, and Selysette is seen fleeing, disheveled, towards the castle.
This wounded wife has less control over her natural feelings than Astolaine had in similar circumstances; but Aglavaine, in several pages of parchment speech, shows herself so wise and strong a woman that Selysette's jealousy of her is turned into love. Now all three dream of a triangular love of equal magnitudes. "We will have no other cares," says Aglavaine, "save to become as beautiful as possible, so that all the three of us may love one another the more.... We will put so much beauty into ourselves and our surroundings that there will be no room left for misfortune and sadness; and if these would enter in spite of all they must perforce become beautiful too before they dare knock at our door." They dream of a _unio mystica_ of souls: "It seems to me," says Méléandre to Aglavaine, "as though my soul and my whole being and all they possess had changed their abode, as though I were embracing, with tears, that part of myself which is not of this world, when I am embracing you."
But Méléandre, though he loves Selysette's awakened soul more than in old days he loved her girlish body, cannot help loving Aglavaine more. "Is it not strange?" Aglavaine asks Selysette, "I love you, I love Méléandre, Méléandre loves me, he loves you too, you love us both, and yet we cannot be happy, because the hour has not yet come when human beings can be united so."
It is clear that one of the two women must go. In spite of her duty to herself Aglavaine, in a fit of generosity, decides to sacrifice herself; but Selysette makes her promise not to go till she herself tells her she may. She talks mysteriously to Aglavaine of a plan she has conceived for putting things right; and it is the great weakness of the drama that the wise woman, who can read souls so easily, cannot guess the truth in this one instance. A fool would have known that Selysette was contemplating suicide; but Aglavaine could not be allowed to wreck the tragedy....