MARG. Stop! You have a motive-- GIL. My dear, I still lay claim to the possession of a soul. MARG. Except now and then. GIL. Please don't try to disparage our former relations. It's no use. They are the noblest experiences you've ever had. MARG. Heavens, when I think that I endured this twaddle for one whole year I-- GIL. Endure? You were intoxicated with joy. Don't try to be ungrateful. I'm not. Admitting that you behaved never so execrably at the end, yet I can't bring myself to look upon it with bitterness. It had to come just that way. MARG. Indeed! GIL. I owe you an explanation. This: at the moment when you were beginning to drift away from me, when homesickness for the stables gripped you--_la nostalgie de l'écurie_--at that moment I was done with you. MARG. Impossible. GIL. You failed to notice the least sign in your characteristic way. I was done with you. To be plain, I didn't need you any longer. What you had to give you gave me. Your uses were fulfilled. In the depths of your soul you knew, unconsciously you knew-- MARG. Please don't get so hot. GIL. [_unruffled_]. That our day was over. Our relations had served their purpose. I don't regret having loved you. MARG. I do! GIL. Capital! This measly outburst must reveal to a person of any insight just one thing: the essential line of difference between the artist and the dilettante. To you, Margaret, our _liaison_ means nothing more than the memory of a few abandoned nights, a few heart-to-heart talks in the winding ways of the English gardens. But _I_ have made it over into a work of art. MARG. So have I! GIL. Eh? What do you mean? MARG. I have done what you have done. I, too, have written a novel in which our relations are depicted. I, too, have embalmed our love--or what we thought was our love--for all time. GIL. If I were you, I wouldn't talk of "for all time" before the appearance of the second edition. MARG. Your writing a novel and my writing a novel are two different things. GIL. Maybe. MARG. You are a free man. You don't have to steal your hours devoted to artistic labor. And your future doesn't depend on the throw. GIL. And you? MARG. That's what I've done. Only a half hour ago Clement left me because I confessed to him that I had written a novel. GIL. Left you--for good? MARG. I don't know. But it isn't unlikely. He went away in a fit of anger. What he'll decide to do I can't say. GIL. So he objects to your writing, does he? He can't bear to see his mistress put her intelligence to some use. Capital! And he represents the blood of the country! H'm! And you, you're not ashamed to give yourself up to the arms of an idiot of this sort, whom you once-- MARG. Don't you speak of him like that. You don't know him. GIL. Ah!