BURKE--To hell with them! That I may never see another woman to my dying hour! ANNA--That's what you say now, but I'll bet by the time you get there you'll have forgot all about me and start in talking the same old bull you talked to me to the first one you meet. BURKE--[Offended.] I'll not, then! God mend you, is it making me out to be the like of yourself you are, and you taking up with this one and that all the years of your life? ANNA--[Angrily assertive.] Yes, that's yust what I do mean! You been doing the same thing all your life, picking up a new girl in every port. How're you any better than I was? BURKE--[Thoroughly exasperated.] Is it no shame you have at all? I'm a fool to be wasting talk on you and you hardened in badness. I'll go out of this and lave you alone forever. [He starts for the door--then stops to turn on her furiously] And I suppose 'tis the same lies you told them all before that you told to me? ANNA--[Indignantly.] That's a lie! I never did! BURKE--[Miserably.] You'd be saying that, anyway. ANNA--[Forcibly, with growing intensity.] Are you trying to accuse me--of being in love--really in love--with them? BURKE--I'm thinking you were, surely. ANNA--[Furiously, as if this were the last insult--advancing on him threateningly] You mutt, you! I've stood enough from you. Don't you dare. [With scornful bitterness.] Love 'em! Oh, my Gawd! You damn thick-head! Love 'em? [Savagely.] I hated 'em, I tell you! Hated 'em, hated 'em, hated 'em! And may Gawd strike me dead this minute and my mother, too, if she was alive, if I ain't telling you the honest truth! BURKE--[Immensely pleased by her vehemence--a light beginning to break over his face--but still uncertain, torn between doubt and the desire to believe--helplessly.] If I could only be believing you now! ANNA--[Distractedly.] Oh, what's the use? What's the use of me talking? What's the use of anything? [Pleadingly.] Oh, Mat, you mustn't think that for a second! You mustn't! Think all the other bad about me you want to, and I won't kick, 'cause you've a right to. But don't think that! [On the point of tears.] I couldn't bear it! It'd be yust too much to know you was going away where I'd never see you again--thinking that about me! BURKE--[After an inward struggle--tensely--forcing out the words with difficulty.] If I was believing--that you'd never had love for any other man in the world but me--I could be forgetting the rest, maybe. ANNA--[With a cry of joy.] Mat! BURKE--[Slowly.] If 'tis truth you're after telling, I'd have a right, maybe, to believe you'd changed--and that I'd changed you myself 'til the thing you'd been all your life wouldn't be you any more at all. ANNA--[Hanging on his words--breathlessly.] Oh, Mat! That's what I been trying to tell you all along!