(smiling). The only one of your admirers to whom you’ve ever given the least encouragement!
Mrs. Dale. Say rather the most easily pleased!
Ventnor. Or the only one you cared to please?
Mrs. Dale. Ah, you haven’t kept my letters!
Ventnor (gravely). Is that a challenge? Look here, then! (He drams a packet from his pocket and holds it out to her.)
Mrs. Dale (taking the packet and looking at him earnestly). Why have you brought me these?
Ventnor. I didn’t bring them; they came because I came—that’s all. (Tentatively.) Are we unwelcome?
Mrs. Dale (who has undone the packet and does not appear to hear him). The very first I ever wrote you—the day after we met at the concert. How on earth did you happen to keep it? (She glances over it.) How perfectly absurd! Well, it’s not a compromising document.
Ventnor. I’m afraid none of them are.
Mrs. Dale (quickly). Is it to that they owe their immunity? Because one could leave them about like safety matches?—Ah, here’s another I remember—I wrote that the day after we went skating together for the first time. (She reads it slowly.) How odd! How very odd!
Ventnor. What?
Mrs. Dale. Why, it’s the most curious thing—I had a letter of this kind to do the other day, in the novel I’m at work on now—the letter of a woman who is just—just beginning—
Ventnor. Yes—just beginning—?
Mrs. Dale. And, do you know, I find the best phrase in it, the phrase I somehow regarded as the fruit of—well, of all my subsequent discoveries—is simply plagiarized, word for word, from this!
Ventnor (eagerly). I told you so! You were all there!
Mrs. Dale (critically). But the rest of it’s poorly done—very poorly. (Reads the letter over.) H’m—I didn’t know how to leave off. It takes me forever to get out of the door.
Ventnor (gayly). Perhaps I was there to prevent you! (After a pause.) I wonder what I said in return?
Mrs. Dale (interested). Shall we look? (She rises.) Shall we—really? I have them all here, you know. (She goes toward the cabinet.)
Ventnor (following her with repressed eagerness). Oh—all!
Mrs. Dale (throws open the door of the cabinet, revealing a number of packets). Don’t you believe me now?
Ventnor. Good heavens! How I must have repeated myself! But then you were so very deaf.
Mrs. Dale (takes out a packet and returns to her seat. Ventnor extends an impatient hand for the letters). No—no; wait! I want to find your answer to the one I was just reading. (After a pause.) Here it is—yes, I thought so!
Ventnor. What did you think?
Mrs. Dale (triumphantly). I thought it was the one in which you quoted Epipsychidion—
Ventnor. Mercy! Did I quote things? I don’t wonder you were cruel.
Mrs. Dale. Ah, and here’s the other—the one I—the one I didn’t answer—for a long time. Do you remember?
Ventnor (with emotion). Do I remember? I wrote it the morning after we heard Isolde—
Mrs. Dale (disappointed). No—no. That wasn’t the one I didn’t answer! Here—this is the one I mean.
Ventnor (takes it curiously). Ah—h’m—this is very like unrolling a mummy—_(he glances at her)_—with a live grain of wheat in it, perhaps?—Oh, by Jove!
Mrs. Dale. What?
Ventnor. Why, this is the one I made a sonnet out of afterward! By Jove, I’d forgotten where that idea came from. You may know the lines perhaps? They’re in the fourth volume of my Complete Edition—It’s the thing beginning
Love came to me with unrelenting eyes—
one of my best, I rather fancy. Of course, here it’s very crudely put—the values aren’t brought out—ah! this touch is good though—very good. H’m, I daresay there might be other material. (He glances toward the cabinet.)
Mrs. Dale (drily). The live grain of wheat, as you said!
Ventnor. Ah, well—my first harvest was sown on rocky ground—now I plant for the fowls of the air. (Rising and walking toward the cabinet.) When can I come and carry off all this rubbish?
Mrs. Dale. Carry it off?
Ventnor (embarrassed). My dear lady, surely between you and me explicitness is a burden. You must see that these letters of ours can’t be left to take their chance like an ordinary correspondence—you said yourself we were public property.
Mrs. Dale. To take their chance? Do you suppose that, in my keeping, your letters take any chances? (Suddenly.) Do mine—in yours?
Ventnor (still more embarrassed). Helen—! (He takes a turn through the room.) You force me to remind you that you and I are differently situated—that in a moment of madness I sacrificed the only right you ever gave me—the right to love you better than any other woman in the world. (A pause. She says nothing and he continues, with increasing difficulty—) You asked me just now why I carried your letters about with me—kept them, literally, in my own hands. Well, suppose it’s to be sure of their not falling into some one else’s?
Mrs. Dale. Oh!
Ventnor (throws himself into a chair). For God’s sake don’t pity me!
Mrs. Dale (after a long pause). Am I dull—or are you trying to say that you want to give me back my letters?
Ventnor (starting up). I? Give you back—? God forbid! Your letters? Not for the world! The only thing I have left! But you can’t dream that in my hands—
Mrs. Dale (suddenly). You want yours, then?
Ventnor (repressing his eagerness). My dear friend, if I’d ever dreamed that you’d kept them—?
Mrs. Dale (accusingly). You do want them. (A pause. He makes a deprecatory gesture.) Why should they be less safe with me than mine with you? I never forfeited the right to keep them.
Ventnor (after another pause). It’s compensation enough, almost, to have you reproach me! (He moves nearer to her, but she makes no response.) You forget that I’ve forfeited all my rights—even that of letting you keep my letters.
Mrs. Dale. You do want them! (She rises, throws all the letters into the cabinet, locks the door and puts the key in her pocket.) There’s my answer.
Ventnor. Helen—!
Mrs. Dale. Ah, I paid dearly enough for the right to keep them, and I mean to! (She turns to him passionately.) Have you ever asked yourself how I paid for it? With what months and years of solitude, what indifference to flattery, what resistance to affection?—Oh, don’t smile because I said affection, and not love. Affection’s a warm cloak in cold
