Part 14 (2/2)

Listen. I look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of drunkenness.

AMY. [_Neither understanding nor wis.h.i.+ng to; only shocked and hurt._] You beast.

TREBELL. [_With bitter sarcasm._] No, don't say that. Won't it comfort you to think of drunkenness as a beautiful thing? There are precedents enough ... cla.s.sic ones.

AMY. You mean I might have been any other woman.

TREBELL. [_Quite inexorable._] Wouldn't any other woman have served the purpose ... and is it less of a purpose because we didn't know we had it?

Does my unworthiness then ... if you like to call it so ... make you unworthy now? I must make you see that it doesn't.

AMY. [_Petulantly hammering at her idee fixe._] But you didn't love me ...

and you don't love me.

TREBELL. [_Keeping his patience._] No ... only within the last five minutes have I really taken the smallest interest in you. And now I believe I'm half jealous. Can you understand that? You've been talking a lot of nonsense about your emotions and your immortal soul. Don't you see it's only now that you've become a person of some importance to the world ... and why?

AMY. [_Losing her patience, childishly._] What do you mean by the World? You don't seem to have any personal feelings at all. It's horrible you should have thought of me like that. There has been no other man than you that I would have let come anywhere near me ... not for more than a year.

_He realises that she will never understand._

TREBELL. My dear girl, I'm sorry to be brutal. Does it matter so much to you that I should have wished to be the father of your child?

AMY. [_Ungracious but pacified by his change of tone._] It doesn't matter now.

TREBELL. [_Friendly still._] On principle I don't make promises. But I think I can promise you that if you keep your head and will keep your health, this shall all be made as easy for you as if everyone could know. And let's think what the child may mean to you ... just the fact of his birth. Nothing to me, of course! Perhaps that accounts for the touch of jealousy. I've forfeited my rights because I hadn't honourable intentions. You can't forfeit yours. Even if you never see him and he has to grow up among strangers ... just to have had a child must make a difference to you. Of course, it may be a girl. I wonder.

_As he wanders on so optimistically she stares at him and her face changes. She realises...._

AMY. Do you expect me to go through with this? Henry! ... I'd sooner kill myself.

_There is silence between them. He looks at her as one looks at some unnatural thing. Then after a moment he speaks, very coldly._

TREBELL. Oh ... indeed. Don't get foolish ideas into your head. You've no choice now ... no reasonable choice.

AMY. [_Driven to bay; her last friend an enemy._] I won't go through with it.

TREBELL. It hasn't been so much the fear of scandal then--

AMY. That wouldn't break my heart. You'd marry me, wouldn't you? We could go away somewhere. I could be very fond of you, Henry.

TREBELL. [_Marvelling at these tangents._] Marry you! I should murder you in a week.

_This sounds only brutal to her; she lets herself be shamed._

AMY. You've no more use for me than the use you've made of me.

TREBELL. [_Logical again._] Won't you realise that there's a third party to our discussion ... that I'm of no importance beside him and you of very little. Think of the child.

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