Oh, I don’t know. How can I--plan it out? I’m going as soon as I can tell him. All night--all day--I’ve been trying to tell him--and when I get near him--I run away. _Why did you tell me?_ ABBIE [_Harshly._] Why did you _know_--what you weren’t to know? But if you have some way of knowing what you aren’t told--you think you have the right to do _your_ thing with that? Undo what she did? What _I_ did? Do you know what it took _out_ of me to do this? There’s nothing left of me. MARGARET [_With a laugh. Right on the verge of being not herself._] No. You’re a wreck. Another wreck. It’s your Darwinian theory. Your free speech. ABBIE Oh, I was afraid of you. I didn’t want you to come. I knew you’d--get _to_ things. [_ABBIE goes to the door and looks out._ MARGARET He is out there? ABBIE Yes. [_MARGARET tries to go; moves just a little._] And you’d go to him and--what _for_? MARGARET Because I can’t _live_--leaving that on him--having him think--when I know he didn’t. I can’t leave that on him one more hour. ABBIE [_Standing in the door to block her going._] And when you take that from him--_what do you give to him?_ [_They stare at one another; MARGARET falls back._ MARGARET Don’t ask me to see so many things, Abbie. I can only see this thing. I’ve grown afraid of seeing. ABBIE [_After looking at her, seeing something of her suffering._] Miss Margaret, why did you do what you did last night? How did you know? MARGARET I don’t know. ABBIE But you knew. MARGARET No. I didn’t _know_. I didn’t know. It didn’t come from me. It came--from the rightness. [_A laugh._ ABBIE If you could get that without being told--why don’t you get more without being told? [_MARGARET gives her a startled look._] For you will never be told. MARGARET You know _more_? ABBIE No. My knowing stops with what you got from me last night. But I knew her. I thought maybe, as you have some way of knowing what you aren’t told, you could--see into this. _See._ MARGARET I’ve lost my seeing. It was through her I saw. It was through Bernice I could see. And now it’s dark. [_Slowly turning toward the closed room._] Oh, how still death is. [_The two women are as if caught into this stillness._ ABBIE [_Looking from the door._] He turned this way. [_Swiftly turning back to MARGARET._] But you _couldn’t_ tell him. MARGARET No, I can’t. Yes, I must! I tell you there’s something in me can’t _stand_ it to see any one go down under a thing he shouldn’t have to bear. Why that feeling has made my life! Do you think I’ve _wanted_ to do the kind of work I do? Don’t you think I’d like to be doing--happier things? But there’s something in my blood _drives_ me to--what’s right. ABBIE And something in _my_ blood drives me to what’s right! And I went against it--went against my whole life--so she could rest. I did it because I loved her. But you didn’t love her. MARGARET Oh--Abbie! ABBIE