Act IV - Page 2

season is almost over. There is no use
staying on. Poor darling! We'll go away to-day, if you like.
[Rises.] We can easily catch the 3.40. I'll send a wire to
Fannen. [Crosses and sits down at table to write a telegram.]

LADY WINDERMERE. Yes; let us go away to-day. No; I can't go to-
day, Arthur. There is some one I must see before I leave town--
some one who has been kind to me.

LORD WINDERMERE. [Rising and leaning over sofa.] Kind to you?

LADY WINDERMERE. Far more than that. [Rises and goes to him.] I
will tell you, Arthur, but only love me, love me as you used to
love me.

LORD WINDERMERE. Used to? You are not thinking of that wretched
woman who came here last night? [Coming round and sitting R. of
her.] You don't still imagine--no, you couldn't.

LADY WINDERMERE. I don't. I know now I was wrong and foolish.

LORD WINDERMERE. It was very good of you to receive her last
night--but you are never to see her again.

LADY WINDERMERE. Why do you say that? [A pause.]

LORD WINDERMERE. [Holding her hand.] Margaret, I thought Mrs.
Erlynne was a woman more sinned against than sinning, as the phrase
goes. I thought she wanted to be good, to get back into a place
that she had lost by a moment's folly, to lead again a decent life.
I believed what she told me--I was mistaken in her. She is bad--as
bad as a woman can be.

LADY WINDERMERE. Arthur, Arthur, don't talk so bitterly about any
woman. I don't think now that people can be divided into the good
and the bad as though they were two separate races or creations.
What are called good women may have terrible things in them, mad
moods of recklessness, assertion, jealousy, sin. Bad women, as
they are termed, may have in them sorrow, repentance, pity,
sacrifice. And I don't think Mrs. Erlynne a bad woman--I know
she's not.

LORD WINDERMERE. My dear child, the woman's impossible. No matter
what harm she tries to do us, you must never see her again. She is
inadmissible anywhere.

LADY WINDERMERE. But I want to see her. I want her to come here.

LORD WINDERMERE. Never!

LADY WINDERMERE. She came here once as YOUR guest. She must come
now as MINE. That is but fair.

LORD WINDERMERE. She should never have come here.

LADY WINDERMERE. [Rising.] It is too late, Arthur, to say that
now. [Moves away.]

LORD WINDERMERE. [Rising.] Margaret, if you knew where Mrs.
Erlynne went last night, after she left this house, you would not
sit in the same room with her. It was absolutely shameless, the
whole thing.

LADY WINDERMERE. Arthur, I can't bear it any longer. I must tell
you. Last night -

[Enter PARKER with a tray on which lie LADY WINDERMERE'S fan and a
card.]