HELEN. Contracts! What are contracts to you! Why, there's not a contract made that one cannot get around in some way! What do people make contracts for? Don't use your contract as a weapon with which to murder me. I am not afraid of your contracts! Let me go with you, Oscar! We'll see if he as much as mentions a breach of contract. He won't do it or I am a poor judge of human nature. And if he does object, it will still be time for me to die. GERARDO. But we have no right to possess each other, Helen! You are as little free to follow me as I am to assume such a responsibility. I do not belong to myself; I belong to my art ... HELEN. Oh don't talk to me of your art! What do I care for your art. I've clung to your art merely to attract your attention. Did Heaven create a man like you to let you make a clown of yourself night after night? Are you not ashamed of boasting of it? You see that I am willing to overlook your being an artist. What wouldn't one overlook in a demigod like you? And if you were a convict, Oscar, I could not feel differently toward you. I have lost all control over myself! I should still lie in the dust before you as I am doing now! I should still implore your mercy as I am doing now! My own self would still be abandoned to you as it is now! I should still be facing death as I am now! GERARDO (laughing). Why, Helen, you and facing death! Women so richly endowed for the enjoyment of life as you are do not kill themselves. You know the value of life better than I. You are too happily constituted to cast it away. That is left for others to do--for stunted and dwarfed creatures, the stepchildren of nature. HELEN. Oscar, I did not say that I was going to shoot myself. When did I say that? How could I summon the courage? I say that I shall die if you do not take me with you just as one might die of any ailment because I can live only if I am with you! I can live without anything else--without home, without children, but not without you, Oscar! I can _not_ live without _you_! GERARDO (uneasy). Helen--if you do not calm yourself now, you will force me to do something terrible! I have just ten minutes left. The scene you are making here won't be accepted as a legal excuse for my breaking my contract! No court would regard your excited state of mind as a sufficient justification. I have ten more minutes to give you. If by that time you have not calmed yourself, Helen--then I cannot leave you to yourself! HELEN. Oh let the whole world see me lie here! GERARDO. Consider what you will risk! HELEN. As if I had anything left to risk! GERARDO. You might lose your social position. HELEN. All I can lose is you! GERARDO. What about those to whom you belong? HELEN. I can now belong to no one but you! GERARDO. But I do not belong to you! HELEN. I've nothing left to lose but life itself. GERARDO. How about your children? HELEN (flaring up). Who took me away from them, Oscar! Who robbed my children of their mother!