sigh of relief he drops into Paramore’s chair.)
JULIA. Come here. I have something to say to you.
CHARTERIS. Yes? (He rolls the chair a few inches towards her.)
JULIA. Come here, I say. I am not going to shout across the room at you. Are you afraid of me?
CHARTERIS. Horribly. (He moves the chair slowly, with great misgiving, to the end of the couch.)
JULIA (with studied insolence). Has that woman told you that she has given you up to me without an attempt to defend her conquest?
CHARTERIS (whispering persuasively). Shew that you are capable of the same sacrifice. Give me up, too.
JULIA. Sacrifice! And so you think I’m dying to marry you, do you?
CHARTERIS. I am afraid your intentions have been honourable, Julia.
JULIA. You cad!
CHARTERIS (with a sigh). I confess I am something either more or less than a gentleman, Julia. You once gave me the benefit of the doubt.
JULIA. Indeed! I never told you so. If you cannot behave like a gentleman, you had better go back to the society of the woman who has given you up — if such a coldblooded, cowardly creature can be called a woman. (She rises majestically; he makes his chair fly back to the table.) I know you now, Leonard Charteris, through and through, in all your falseness, your petty spite, your cruelty and your vanity. The place you coveted has been won by a man more worthy of it.
CHARTERIS (springing up, and coming close to her, gasping with eagerness). What do you mean? Out with it. Have you accep —
JULIA. I am engaged to Dr. Paramore.
CHARTERIS (enraptured). My own Julia! (He attempts to embrace her.)
JULIA (recoiling — he catching her hands and holding them). How dare you! Are you mad? Do you wish me to call Dr. Paramore?
CHARTERIS. Call everybody, my darling — everybody in London. Now I shall no longer have to be brutal — to defend myself — to go in fear of you. How I have looked forward to this day! You know now that I don’t want you to marry me or to love me: Paramore can have all that. I only want to look on and rejoice disinterestedly in the happiness of (kissing her hand) my dear Julia (kissing the other), my beautiful Julia. (She tears her hands away and raises them as if to strike him, as she did the night before at Cuthbertson’s.) No use to threaten me now: I am not afraid of those hands — the loveliest hands in the world.
JULIA. How have you the face to turn round like this after insulting and torturing me!
CHARTERIS. Never mind, dearest: you never did understand me; and you never will. Our vivisecting friend has made a successful experiment at last.
JULIA (earnestly). It is you who are the vivisector — a far crueller, more wanton vivisector than he.
CHARTERIS. Yes; but then I learn so much more from my experiments than he does! And the victims learn as much as I do. That’s where my moral superiority comes in.
JULIA (sitting down again on the couch with rueful humour). Well, you shall not experiment on me any more. Go to your Grace if you want a victim. She’ll be a tough one.
CHARTERIS (reproachfully sitting down beside her). And you drove me to propose to her to escape from you! Suppose she had accepted me, where should I be now?
JULIA. Where I am, I suppose, now that I have accepted Paramore.
CHARTERIS. But I should have made Grace unhappy. (Julia sneers). However, now I come to think of it, you’ll make Paramore unhappy. And yet if you refused him he would be in despair. Poor devil!
JULIA (her temper flashing up for a moment again). He is a better man than you.
CHARTERIS (humbly). I grant you that, my dear.
JULIA (impetuously). Don’t call me your dear. And what do you mean by saying that I shall make him unhappy? Am I not good enough for him?
CHARTERIS (dubiously). Well, that depends on what you mean by good enough.
JULIA (earnestly). You might have made me good if you had chosen to. You had a great power over me. I was like a child in your hands; and you knew it.
CHARTERIS (with comic acquiescence). Yes, my dear. That means that whenever you got jealous and flew into a violent rage, I could always depend on it’s ending happily if I only waited long enough, and petted you very hard all the time. When you had had your fling, and called the object of your jealousy every name you could lay your tongue to, and abused me to your heart’s content for a couple of hours, then the reaction would come; and you would at last subside into a soothing rapture of affection which gave you a sensation of being angelically good and forgiving. Oh, I know that sort of goodness! You may have thought on these occasions that I was bringing out your latent amiability; but I thought you were bringing out mine, and using up rather more than your fair share of it.
JULIA. According to you, then, I have no good in me! I am an utterly vile, worthless woman. Is that it?
CHARTERIS. Yes, if you are to be judged as you judge others. From the conventional point of view, there’s nothing to be said for you, Julia — nothing. That’s why I have to find some other point of view to save my selfrespect when I remember how I have loved you. Oh, what I have learnt from you! — from you, who could learn nothing from me! I made a fool of you; and you brought me wisdom: I broke your heart; and you brought me joy: I made you curse your womanhood; and you revealed my manhood to me. Blessings forever and ever on my Julia’s name! (With genuine emotion, he takes her hand to kiss it again.)
JULIA (snatching her hand away in disgust). Oh, stop talking that nasty sneering stuff.
CHARTERIS (laughingly appealing to the heavens). She calls it nasty sneering stuff! Well, well: I’ll never talk like that to you again, dearest. It only means that you are a beautiful woman, and that we all love you.
JULIA. Don’t say that: I hate it. It sounds as if I were a mere animal.
CHARTERIS. Hm! A fine animal is a very wonderful thing. Don’t let us disparage animals, Julia.
JULIA. That is what you really think me.
CHARTERIS. Come, Julia: you don’t expect me to admire you for your moral qualities, do you? (She turns and looks hard at him. He starts up apprehensively and backs away from her. She rises and follows him up slowly and intently.)
JULIA (deliberately). I have seen you very much infatuated with this depraved creature who has no moral qualities.
CHARTERIS (retreating). Keep off, Julia. Remember your new obligations to Paramore.
JULIA (overtaking him in the middle of the room). Never mind Paramore: that is my business. (She grasps the lappels of his coat in her hands, and looks fixedly at him.) Oh, if the people you talk so cleverly to could only know you as I know you! Sometimes I wonder at myself for ever caring for you.
CHARTERIS (beaming at her). Only sometimes?
JULIA. You fraud! You humbug! You miserable little plaster saint! (He looks delighted.) Oh! (In a paroxysm half of rage, half of tenderness, she shakes
