SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us—else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man’s love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me—yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me. She offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat. I could have killed it for ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness against me. You prevented me. No one but you, you know it. And now what is there before me but public disgrace, ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured life, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no more ideals of men! let them not put them on altars and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you—you whom I have so wildly loved—have ruined mine! [_He passes from the room_. LADY CHILTERN _rushes towards him_, _but the door is closed when she reaches it_. _Pale with anguish_, _bewildered_, _helpless_, _she sways like a plant in the water_. _Her hands_, _outstretched_, _seem to tremble in the air like blossoms in the wind_. _Then she flings herself down beside a sofa and buries her face_. _Her sobs are like the sobs of a child_.] ACT DROP. THIRD ACT SCENE _The Library in Lord Goring’s house_. _An Adam room_. _On the right is the door leading into the hall_. _On the left_, _the door of the smoking-room_. _A pair of folding doors at the back open into the drawing-room_. _The fire is lit_. _Phipps_, _the butler_, _is arranging some newspapers on the writing-table_. _The distinction of Phipps is his impassivity_. _He has been termed by enthusiasts the Ideal Butler_. _The Sphinx is not so incommunicable_. _He is a mask with a manner_. _Of his intellectual or emotional life_, _history knows nothing_. _He represents the dominance of form_.