Act II - Page 2

are you afraid to be your real self with me? I am just like you.

PROSERPINE
Like me! Pray, are you flattering me or flattering yourself? I don't feel quite sure which. [She turns to go back to the typewriter.]

MARCHBANKS [stopping her mysteriously]
Hush! I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things--foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. [Almost whispering.] It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken to. [At his normal pitch, but with deep melancholy.] All the love in the world is longing to speak; only it dare not, because it is shy, shy, shy. That is the world's tragedy. [With a deep sigh he sits in the spare chair and buries his face in his hands.]

PROSERPINE [amazed, but keeping her wits about her--her point of honor in encounters with strange young men]
Wicked people get over that shyness occasionally, don't they?

MARCHBANKS [scrambling up almost fiercely]
Wicked people means people who have no love: therefore they have no shame. They have the power to ask love because they don't need it: they have the power to offer it because they have none to give. [He collapses into his seat, and adds, mournfully] But we, who have love, and long to mingle it with the love of others: we cannot utter a word. [Timidly.] You find that, don't you?

PROSERPINE
Look here: if you don't stop talking like this, I'll leave the room, Mr. Marchbanks: I really will. It's not proper. [She resumes her seat at the typewriter, opening the blue book and preparing to copy a passage from it.]

MARCHBANKS [hopelessly]
Nothing that's worth saying is proper. [He rises, and wanders about the room in his lost way, saying] I can't understand you, Miss Garnett. What am I to talk about?

PROSERPINE [snubbing him]
Talk about indifferent things, talk about the weather.

MARCHBANKS
Would you stand and talk about indifferent things if a child were by, crying bitterly with hunger?

PROSERPINE
I suppose not.

MARCHBANKS
Well: I can't talk about indifferent things with my heart crying out bitterly in its hunger.

PROSERPINE
Then hold your tongue.

MARCHBANKS
Yes: that is what it always comes to. We hold our tongues. Does that stop the cry of your heart?--for it does cry: doesn't it? It must, if you have a heart.

PROSERPINE [suddenly rising with her hand pressed on her heart]

Oh, it's no use trying to work while you talk like that. [She leaves her little table and sits on the sofa. Her feelings are evidently strongly worked on.] It's no business of yours, whether my heart cries