MELISANDE. I am not interested in your wants.
GERVASE. Oh! (Gently) I'm sorry that we've got to forget about this
morning. (Going closer to her) Is it so easy to forget, Melisande?
MELISANDE. Very easy for you, I should think.
GERVASE. But not for you?
MELISANDE (bitterly). You dress up and amuse yourself, and then laugh
and go back to your ordinary life again--you don't want to remember
_that_, do you, every time you do it?
GERVASE. You let your hair down and flirt with me and laugh and go
home again, but _you_ can't forget. Why should I?
MELISANDE (furiously). How dare you say I flirted with you?
GERVASE. How dare you say I laughed at you?
MELISANDE. Do you think I knew you would be there when I went up to
the wood?
GERVASE. Do you think _I_ knew you would be there when _I_ went up?
MELISANDE. Then why were you there all dressed up like that?
GERVASE. My car broke down and I spent the night in it. I went up the
hill to look for breakfast.
MELISANDE. Breakfast! That's all you think about.
GERVASE (cheerfully). Well, it's always cropping up.
MELISANDE (in disgust). Oh! (She moves away from him and then turns
round holding out her hand) Good-bye, Mr. Mallory.
GERVASE (taking it). Good-bye, Miss Knowle. . . . (Gently) May I kiss
your hands, Melisande?
MELISANDE (pathetically). Oh, don't! (She hides her face in them.)
GERVASE. Dear hands. . . . May I kiss your lips, Melisande? (She says
nothing. He comes closer to her) Melisande!
(He is about to put his arms round her, but she breaks away from him.)
MELISANDE. Oh, don't, don't! What's the good of pretending? It was
only pretence this morning--what's the good of going on with it? I
thought you were so different from other men, but you're just the
same, just the same. You talk about the things they talk about, you
wear the clothes they wear. You were my true knight, my fairy Prince,
this morning, and this afternoon you come down dressed like that (she
waves her hand at it) and tell me that you are on the Stock Exchange!
Oh, can't you see what you've done? All the beautiful world that I had
built up for you and me--shattered, shattered.
GERVASE (going to her). Melisande!
MELISANDE. No, no!
GERVASE (stopping). All right.
MELISANDE (recovering herself). Please go.
GERVASE (with a smile). Well, that's not quite fair, you know.
MELISANDE. What do you mean?
GERVASE. Well, what about _my_ beautiful world--the world that _I_ had
built up?
MELISANDE. I don't understand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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