MORELL. That foolish boy can speak with the inspiration of a child and the cunning of a serpent. He has claimed that you belong to him and not to me; and, rightly or wrongly, I have come to fear that it may be true. I will not go about tortured with doubts and suspicions. I will not live with you and keep a secret from you. I will not suffer the intolerable degradation of jealousy. We have agreed--he and I--that you shall choose between us now. I await your decision. CANDIDA (slowly recoiling a step, her heart hardened by his rhetoric in spite of the sincere feeling behind it). Oh! I am to choose, am I? I suppose it is quite settled that I must belong to one or the other. MORELL (firmly). Quite. You must choose definitely. MARCHBANKS (anxiously). Morell: you don't understand. She means that she belongs to herself. CANDIDA (turning on him). I mean that and a good deal more, Master Eugene, as you will both find out presently. And pray, my lords and masters, what have you to offer for my choice? I am up for auction, it seems. What do you bid, James? MORELL (reproachfully). Cand-- (He breaks down: his eyes and throat fill with tears: the orator becomes the wounded animal.) I can't speak-- CANDIDA (impulsively going to him). Ah, dearest-- MARCHBANKS (in wild alarm). Stop: it's not fair. You mustn't show her that you suffer, Morell. I am on the rack, too; but I am not crying. MORELL (rallying all his forces). Yes: you are right. It is not for pity that I am bidding. (He disengages himself from Candida.) CANDIDA (retreating, chilled). I beg your pardon, James; I did not mean to touch you. I am waiting to hear your bid. MORELL (with proud humility). I have nothing to offer you but my strength for your defence, my honesty of purpose for your surety, my ability and industry for your livelihood, and my authority and position for your dignity. That is all it becomes a man to offer to a woman. CANDIDA (quite quietly). And you, Eugene? What do you offer? MARCHBANKS. My weakness! my desolation! my heart's need! CANDIDA (impressed). That's a good bid, Eugene. Now I know how to make my choice. She pauses and looks curiously from one to the other, as if weighing them. Morell, whose lofty confidence has changed into heartbreaking dread at Eugene's bid, loses all power of concealing his anxiety. Eugene, strung to the highest tension, does not move a muscle. MORELL (in a suffocated voice--the appeal bursting from the depths of his anguish). Candida! MARCHBANKS (aside, in a flash of contempt). Coward! CANDIDA (significantly). I give myself to the weaker of the two. Eugene divines her meaning at once: his face whitens like steel in a furnace that cannot melt it. MORELL (bowing his head with the calm of collapse). I accept your sentence, Candida. CANDIDA. Do you understand, Eugene? MARCHBANKS. Oh, I feel I'm lost. He cannot bear the burden. MORELL (incredulously, raising his bead with prosaic abruptness). Do you mean, me, Candida?