Part 86 (1/2)

AMADEUS

No, not vanity, Cecilia. I love you.

CECILIA (_remains wholly unresponsive_)

AMADEUS

You can't guess, of course, what took place within me while his words were gradually bringing home the truth to me! Once more the doors of heaven have been thrown open to me!

CECILIA

The only thing you forget is that they must remain closed to me forever.

AMADEUS

Don't say that, Cecilia. What has happened to me in the past seems so very insignificant, after all.

CECILIA

Insignificant, you say?--And if it had happened to me, it would have been so significant that people should have had to kill or be killed on that account? How can you think then, that I might get over it so easily?

AMADEUS

How can I...? Because you have proved it already. You knew just what had happened, and yet you became mine again.... You knew that I had been faithless, while you had kept your faith, and yet....

CECILIA

You say that I have kept my faith?--No, I haven't! And even if I should seem faithful to you, I have long ago ceased to be so in my own mind.

_I_ know the desires that have burned within me.... _I_ know how often my body has trembled and yearned in the presence of some man.... And what I told you last night--that I am waiting with wide-open arms, full of longings and expectations--that's true, Amadeus--no less true than it is that I am standing face to face with you now.

AMADEUS

If that be true, what has kept you from satisfying all your longings--you, who have been as free as I have?

CECILIA

I am a woman, Amadeus. And we seem to be like that. Something makes us hesitate even when we have already made up our minds.

AMADEUS

And because you seemed guilty in your own mind, you remained silent?...

And for no other reason have you left me--me, whose sufferings you might have relieved by a single word--to believe you as guilty as myself?

CECILIA

Perhaps....

AMADEUS